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Trump’s Call to Ban Flag-burning Isn’t About Patriotism.
It’s about Silencing Dissent.
By Tara
Golshan
November 29, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "VOX"
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Flag-burning is free speech. Even the late Justice
Antonin Scalia would tell you that
Donald Trump is
laying out his agenda: He wants flag-burning to be a
crime, possibly resulting in a loss of citizenship or
even a year in jail, he tweeted Tuesday morning.
He
was likely referring to an
anti-Trump protest at the liberal Hampshire College
in western Massachusetts, at which an alleged
flag-burning took place.
His
statement can easily be interpreted as yet another
inflammatory and distracting Trump tweet — there have
been many, after all. But Trump’s calls for punishing
flag-burners hinges on more substantial themes behind
his political rise: an intolerance for dissenting voices
and critique, and a willingness to turn a blind eye to
certain inalienable rights afforded by the US
Constitution.
Flag-burning, however unpatriotic, at its core is a form
of expression that has repeatedly been upheld in the
Supreme Court as such.
Trump just doesn’t seem to care — and that’s not new.
Trump is not the only politician to call for a
criminalization of flag-burning. Hillary
Clinton co-sponsored a bill banning flag-burning in 2005
while in the Senate. It was an attempt to equate the act
to cross burning, which can be prosecuted as a violation
of civil rights. The bill failed to pass the Senate by
one vote.
Flag-burning has been a right upheld by the Supreme
Court as a protection of free speech and expression as
recently as 1989 in the 5-4 Texas v. Johnson
decision. The late conservative Justice Antonin
Scalia sided with the protester, holding that
flag-burning is a form of “symbolic
speech” protected by the First Amendment.
“If
it were up to me, I would put in jail every
sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the
American flag. But I am not king.”
Scalia said in 2015, maintaining his position more
than a decade later.
Not
to mention that Trump’s suggestion for punishment goes
against a 1958 Supreme Court
decision that claimed stripping citizenship was a
form of "cruel and unusual punishment,"
Politico notes.
As
the
Washington Post’s Philip Bump notes, “it's
absolutely the sort of fight that Trump would relish,
mind you, pitting egghead supporters of ‘free speech’
and ‘the First Amendment’ against the patriotism of
people who find flag-burning unacceptable.”
Trump’s interest in the debate cements his
long-documented willingness to disregard certain
freedoms afforded by the Constitution, fueled by a
temperament seemingly less rooted in a need to protect
American patriotism, but rather in a desire to silence
critical voices.
Last week, in an
interview with the New York Times, Trump was asked
if he was “committed to the First Amendment” — something
that has been concerning to journalists as he’s
threatened to “open
up our libel laws.”
“I
think you’ll be happy,” he told the room of reporters
and editors. “Actually, somebody said to me on that,
they said, ‘You know, it’s a great idea, softening up
those laws, but you may get sued a lot more.’ I said,
‘You know, you’re right, I never thought about that.’ I
said, ‘You know, I have to start thinking about that.’
So, I, I think you’ll be O.K. I think you’re going to be
fine.”
That the Times’ Mark Thompson felt the need to ask about
a president’s commitment to a core tenet of the
Constitution is a commentary on months of hostility
between Trump and the press — and more broadly critical
voices.
On
the campaign trail, Trump has also repeatedly called for
protesters at his rallies to be “thrown
in jail,” and had demonstrators and journalists
escorted out of his rallies and press conferences.
During the campaign, he revoked press credentials to
Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and other news outlets. As my
colleague Dylan Matthews explained, it’s a mannerism
similar to that of Richard Nixon’s:
This kind of
targeting of the press is classic Nixon. His initial
20-member "enemies' list" contained three
journalists: columnist Mary McGrory, CBS's Dan
Schorr, and LA Times national editor Edwin Guthman.
Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, were
recorded discussing how to
"go after" Schorr; Haldeman
mentions that he'd already gotten the FBI to look
into him and had the IRS investigating Schorr and
McGrory. "FBI agents around the country did
twenty-five interviews on Schorr in less than six
hours," Nixon biographer
Richard Reeves writes.
Trump even
blasted the audience of the musical Hamilton for
booing Vice President-elect Mike Pence (who called the
booing “what freedom sounds like”).
All
of this suggests that Trump is not a big fan of people
expressing their displeasure with him.
One glance at his Twitter feed will demonstrate his
animus toward dissenting or critical voices.
His
position of flag-burning is no different. |
