Guarding Old Glory:

...Some people insist that funding offensive things should be compulsory, in the name of freedom...

...I am not unhappy when agitation of any sort makes it harder for politicians to channel my money toward the funding of abortions, nuclear weapons, or the infliction of the death penalty...

...My hunch is that I would not have liked the exhibit at all...

...If ever there were a political equivalent of what Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace," this is it...

...In the midst of the expectable fog, there was one serious and important question raised...

...to allow an area of argument and discourse, and even grave offense, rather than limit speech and action beyond the absolutely necessary requirements of civil order...

...One of democracy's greatest strengths is an ability to live with certain grey areas...

...I do not want to live in a society where the flag cannot be desecrated, but the cross can be...

...and because we live in a pluralistic society, I am not only willing but eager to see the ban extended to include (that is to say, to exclude from any desecration) such symbols as the Star of David, the Islamic Crescent, the image of the Buddha, and the Mormon representation of the angel Moroni...

...To rule, as the Court did, that offensive behavior may not in some circumstances be prosecuted is not to say that the behavior is any less offensive...

...recent Supreme Court decision, the one which made flag burning in the act of political protest a form of protected free speech, set off a wave of embarrassing behavior...

...Let me take the argument in favor of banning flag burning a step farther along the road (or slippery slope) that seems to be its natural course...

...It is the exclusion of much of what we regard as important from state oversight that has made our society a free one...

...What is interesting here is the conjunction of these visual symbols, the flag on fire and on the floor, and the offensive Mapplethorpe pictures...

...Andy Warhol said that art is what you can get away with...

...The importance of symbols I willingly accept, even celebrate...

...Though I do not compare the two symbols in importance, I think it is not healthy for Americans, Christians or otherwise, to think of the flag, any more than the cross, as a symbol which requires the help now recommended...

...They are allowed to stand for something, without our having to think very much about what they mean...

...Let's ban those, too...

...why not (now that the gun is at my chest) make me fork over even more...

...This is the sort of thing that bores me even when it isn't trying to be offensive, but it caused a predictable reaction...

...It was initiated by our president, and was joined by our always cowardly Congress...

...I do not want the cross protected by law...

...to rely on persuasion, rather than coercion...

...My own argument is that people should be less passive...

...so is one approach to government...

...Some liberals have argued that, because taxpayers passively fund many things with which they may not agree, the arts are entitled to a piece of the potentially offensive pie...

...The nation will probably survive...

...what should worry us is that politicians are so eager to look for politically popular ways to qualify our freedom to explore what that seriousness means...

...The same argument was raised when the Corcoran Gallery canceled an exhibition of photographs, explicitly homoerotic and sadomasochistic, by the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe...

...It shouldn't be so easily subjected to our most passionate feelings about symbols which we are right to take seriously...

...The Court has not ruled it entirely illegal to bite the heads off living chickens, but this does not mean, as some demagogues have suggested, that either the Court or society regards it as "all right...

...Of course, religious symbols are not the only ones whose violation wounds many sensibilities...

...I am not sure whether the Masonic compass and square should be included, but I am willing to see the issue debated...

...There is a rather ugly persuasiveness to this: I am now forced to spend a good deal of my income on gov-ernmentally financed things which offend me, ranging from weapons systems to the salaries of tax auditors...

...To what extent should citizens have a right to refuse such funding, where it supports something they consider outrageous...

...Am I not right to find this offensive...

...Refusing support at the level of taxation is as appropriate, as democratic, as the boycott...

...It is as right to withhold tax money from something you object to (in the arts or in public policy) as it is to refuse to buy table grapes...

...And the flag, as a symbol of freedom, is made to violate its own intended meaning-a sad irony which reminds me of a case which should instruct us now, in which a state court insisted (it was overruled by the Supreme Court) that a couple accept the slogan "Live Free or Die" on their license plates, or lose their freedom...

...Some state funds are voted for support of the Art Institute...

...Children could be scandalized, upset, and wounded deeply by depictions of Santa in compromising situations (drunk, say, or lecherous...

...The exhibit was partially financed by the National Endowment for the Arts...

...But the erosion of the Bill of Rights is not something we should take lightly...

...But our symbols are acknowledged as weak where they need the sort of law Bush proposes to shore them up...

...I don't think the law will make it a stronger symbol...

...I worry about tampering with this...

...We Americans have always had trouble distinguishing between legality and morality, between behavior we accept as appropriate and the behavior we must tolerate in a society which considers liberty essential...

...The point is that I can either make the flag more sacred, in law, than the cross- clearly an act of idolatry directed either toward the flag or the law-or I must reflect on what the law and its limits are, and what law is meant to do...

...The reaction of a lot of people-some of whom, sadly, think of themselves as liberals-is that the denial of this funding amounts to censorship...

...I propose extending the ban on desecration to include the cross...

...If Bush's move for a constitutional amendment to protect the flag from the actions of those very few people who want to burn it passes through all the states, as it might, it could have terrible constitutional consequences...

...All the easily hysterical reactions to this issue, both liberal and conservative, surfaced recently at a student art exhibit in Chicago when a student at the Art Institute placed a flag on the floor and invited observers to walk on it, and then record their reactions...

...But even if it had been in honor of every act of mercy ever performed in history, or an homage to grandmothers everywhere (my hunch is that I wouldn't like those exhibits either), it seems to me (a) that no exhibit is entitled to government funding, no matter what its subject, and (b) that a gallery cancellation, even in fear of an anticipated reaction, does not amount to censorship...

...We should use our language (and maybe our public funding) more carefully than that...

...However, this is precisely what will happen if Bush's amendment is passed...

...I am a Christian, and regard the cross as a serious and sacred symbol, much more a serious symbol than the flag could ever be...