Flag Burning letters/Military Spending

Flag Burning

The decision by in the House of Representatives to vote for a U.S. Constitutional Amendment to ban flag burning/desecration is most unfortunate. Never in our nation's history have we had an Amendment to actually limit any of the Bill of Rights. Remember, freedom of speech isn't just spoken/written words but actions that communicate a message.
It is great to love and respect the flag, but it cannot be enforced at the point of a jail cell. That is not what free democratic republics do. That is not what a nation that wants to be a model to the Middle East in what freedom is.
When we work to protect our symbol, but by doing so, limit our rights to do so, we lessen the value of that symbol. Troops did not fight for the flag as, but the values, and spreading of those values, that that flag represent. For Danes, the Dutch, the French, Koreans, our soldiers fought to bring freedom from tyranny.
That is what America is truly about. Not, creating a hate crime type Amendment which doesn't necessarily punish a burning (burning old flags as they are retired would be OK), but only if done as a form of speech. Some consider wearing a flag on a jacket as desecration; are we going to prosecute them? Indeed, such an Amendment is more likely than not to increase the now pretty much non-existent act of flag burning by making the act legally taboo.
Did our "intelligent" members of Congress realize this obvious point? What is next, a Constitutional Amendment to ban desecration of a picture of the Washington monument or the White House? The founders must be rolling in their graves.

Flag Burning again

I have to disagree with William Tresider. Thousands of Americans didn't die to protect the flag. They died in the service of America.They died to bring liberty to the peoples of France, Belgium, Netherlands and Korea. They died to stop the British Navy from forcing American sailors into the British Navy. The American flag, though a beloved symbol is not the reason we fight wars. It is symbolic. To reduce the freedoms of Americans by changing the U.S. Constitution reduces the value of the flag because it symbolizes an America with just a tad less freedom. In the U.S. Constitution not one Constitutional Amendment limits the rights of Americans, to do so now goes against the very spirit of our Constitution. Indeed, if we want to ensure that flag burning/desecration is rare then we cannot make it illegal because it makes it “forbidden fruit.” I was in the military and I love the flag and that is why I don't want the rights it symbolizes diminished.


Military Spending letter

I must take issue with a June 3 opinion piece about the need for our current level or an increased amount of military spending ("Spending 'too much' on defense? Preposterous"). Robert S. Dudney feels that we can spend more, citing a reduction in spending from the Reagan years. He must remember we are no longer living in the Cold War era. Indeed, Russia is a probationary member of NATO.
We spend more on the military than the next eight or nine nations combined, and most of those nations are our allies. China is no threat to our shores. Iraq and Iran have technology decades inferior to ours. No nation on Earth is even close to invading us.
In regard to the war on terrorism, one or 10 more aircraft carriers in either ocean would not have stopped Sept. 11. We have environmental needs, millions without health insurance, trillions in debt to pass on to our grandchildren. Now is the time to close unnecessary military bases and cancel projects that are fiscally irresponsible, such as the Osprey helicopter with the minor problem that it keeps crashing.
Meet our foreign needs, fine, but let's not let campaign contributions from defense contractors distract us from other concerns.