American flags and the Constitution
The current issue regarding the flag amendment and whether or not we ought to be able to burn American flags in protest reveals a much larger debate - one which has profound implications for the future of our country. For decade upon decade, the courts, and most notably, the Supreme Court, have been bit by bit changing the foundational document of our country, the U.S. Constitution itself.
We see it in the flag burning issue, where the courts have morphed the original protections of free speech and the written word into a much broader collection of behaviors known as expression. We can also see it in the ruling of two days ago that gives one private citizen the right to seize the property of another private citizen if his buddies in city hall deem it to be in the public good.
Judge Robert Bork, in a piece entitled, "Our Judicial Oligarchy" that appeared in First Things in 1996, makes an excellent case that when judges veer from a strict interpretation of the Constitution, they place themselves above the Constitution and the other two branches of our government.
"If there is an "actual" Constitution it can only be the set of principles those who made the Constitution law understood themselves to be ordaining. The idea that the Constitution should be interpreted according to that original understanding has been made to seem an extreme position. That is convenient for those who want results democracy will not give them, but the truth is that violation of original understanding ought to be the extreme position."
If it were only about some goofballs burning American flags, it would hardly be worth talking about.