How much do you know?

It seems that many Americans, whether very involved and opinionated in government and political issues or the complete opposite, don't know that much about American history and where certain laws and traditions come from. Many students who have graduated from college aren't sure about the basics of civics or some aspects of American history. Those who want to protect the flag as a symbol of national unity may not know or understand the symbols of the stars and stripes and what they mean.

In order to test your personal knowledge, why not take the test that new Americans must take? How much do you know?

Could you pass the U.S. citizenship test? Here it is:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13442226/

Good luck!

History of Flag Desecration

The flag that we know of today has evolved over time. In 1777 the Continental Congress approved the design, but it lacked enthusiasm and strict standardization as well. In 1912 the establishment of the flag was not only motivated by a need for national identity but for practical concerns as well. During the Mexican war in 1846 the military started carrying the U.S. flag as a symbol into battle. It wasn’t until the civil war that the flag had generated attention and deployed symbolic political protests. http://www.usa-flag-site.org/history.shtml.

The civil war marks the beginning as what is known as the flag desecration phenomenon. During the civil war the flag was increasingly politicized and as a result of civil religion, it was granted sacred meaning by government supporters. The newly enshrined status of the flag cued protesters that the symbolic power of the flag could easily be reversed by desecration that punctuated criticism of government.

The confederate or rebel flag quickly became a rival to the U.S. flag http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/museum/63/flags/main.html. Shortly after the flag became an emblem of the Union, government and military elites developed tactics to defend it. As the war erupted, Old Glory was publicly desecrated in many southern states. What is believed to be the first political protest of its kind, a flag was burned in Liberty, Mississippi. In the North, vigilantes coerced citizens and businesses to drape the flag in support of the Union, due to those formal and informal activities, the nation had become much more than flag conscious. http://www.filsonhistorical.org/news_v3n1_cwenv.html.

By the 1890s the flag was being used to promote political parties and their candidates. http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/mckinley.html. William McKinley in 1896 was the first to place the flag at the center of his campaign. The strategy was designed to make opposing candidate William Jennings Bryan seem less patriotic. It was McKinley’s campaign that founded the first annual nation Flag Day. During the 1896 election there were about 20 incidences in which the flag was defaced, torn, and burned.

Nativism and Flag Desecration

The term “flag burning” or “flag desecration” was not familiar to me since there are no cases where a Korean flag was burned in Korea even though we had events to burn the American and Japanese flag during radical movements against a war, the U.S Army, and Japan’s history distortion. When I was reading Welch’s book, Flag Burning, some queries came up in my mind such as why the flag has been a controversial matter of social politics in the United States and what energy makes the flag holy. In my opinion, nativism seems to be the essential factor in generating flag issues and that the flag should be protected since it is a sacred symbol embedded in the identity of America.

According to Welch, the fundamental sentiment on Old Glory originated from nativism. Nativism not only played a pivotal role to sanctify the flag, but also contributed to connect patriotism and nationalism. To Nativists, numerous immigrants from European nations including England, Ireland, and Germany to Canada and Roman Catholics were substantial and potential foes to intimidate a superior culture of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, WASPs, referring to white, native-born, Protestant Americans. Muller indicates “Nativists considered themselves the guardians of American culture and feared that immigrants would have a negative impact not only on America’s social, economic and political institutions, but also on the evolution of a distinctly American national identity.”(Luke B. Muller, 2001)

As a result, from the late 1830s to the mid-1850s organizations such as anti-immigrant American Republican and Native American parties emerged and the “Know-Nothing” movement appeared as well. In order to protect their own identity, nativists were to protect the flag as a symbol of patriotism and nationalism. Welch explains that the death of George Shiffler, who died while trying to protect the flag from desecration by Irish-Americans in the Kensington Riots in 1844, gave significant impetus to nativists to protect the flag. (Michael Welch, 2000)

In nativism, the flag means not merely a banner representing the United States, but a symbol of America’s struggling history to maintain a real American identity. Therefore nativists, patriots, and veterans who are really concerned about the penetration of aliens have had an extreme aversion to flag desecration on the grounds that flag desecration is not only illegal behavior against the government, but a vicious act to engender moral panic. Since there are diverse races and religions in the United States, it could be plausible for nativists to protest the flag as a means of keeping their own identity. Even though nativism seems an old-fashioned story and a part of history, it exists still along with political issues in the present. As Muller writes, “Nativism sporadically emerged as a theme in political discourse that expressed an often overzealous concern for the preservation of an American identity.” (Muller, 2001)

Below is a list of web sites related to nativism, the history of the flag or flag desecration, and the flag burning image.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0D9153AF932A35754C0A966958260

http://www.publiceye.org/ark/immigrants/Nationalism.html
http://www.jstor.org/stable/view/2078834?seq=2
http://data4.blog.de/media/207/1646207_d2565924de_m.jpg
http://www.theodora.com/flags/new8/flag_burning_1.html
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/cp/vol-03/no-02/bonner/bonner-2.shtml
http://www.esquilax.com/flag/history.html


Reference
1. Book
Welch, Michael. (2000) Flag Burning: Moral Panic and the Criminalization, New York:
Hawthorne.
2. Articles in an online journal
Muller, Luke B. (Summer 2001), Nativism and the Search for an American Identity,
GATEWAY-An Academic History Journal onthe Web,
http://grad.usask.ca/gateway/archive4.htm
Holt, Michael F. Nativism, http://dig.lib.niu.edu/message/ps-nativism.html

Video: Moral Panic! at the Disco

Campus Hate Speech Incidents

Yale University (graffiti)

UC Irvine (Nazi imagery)

Pomona College (hate crime)

Brown University (student expelled)

University of Mississippi (slashing incident)

Columbia University (noose incident)

FirstAmendmentCenter.org

FirstAmendmentCenter.org offers a page of resources regarding free speech on public college campuses.

TEXAS v. JOHNSON (1989) CASE BRIEF.

CASE BRIEF: TEXAS v. JOHNSON (1989)

Title and citation

Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397

Facts

Gregory Lee Johnson, the defendant, participated in a demonstration at the Republican National Convention in Texas in 1984. At one point during the nonviolent demonstration, Johnson was handed an American flag and he set it on fire. No one was injured but Johnson was convicted of destroying a respected object. He was fined $2,000 as well as sentenced to a year in prison. He appealed his conviction, but lost in the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas. He then took his case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. His conviction was overturned; the court maintained that Johnson could not be punished for exercising a right to free speech that is protected by the First Amendment. In 1989, the Supreme Court took on the case, and affirmed (by a controversial decision of 5-4) the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ decision to overturn Johnson’s conviction.

Issues

1. Does flag burning pose a threat to the nation’s unity?

2. Should the flag be protected as a symbol of national unity?

3 Does the First Amendment extend to protect speech acts?

4. Is burning a flag an act of protected free speech?

Held

1. No; in this case specifically, the court decided that Johnson’s burning of a flag did not disturb the peace or pose a threat to national unity.

2. No, at least not to the point that it should be singled out from other national objects such as the Constitution as the one protected object or that the destruction of it should be criminalized.

3. Yes; the First Amendment also protects expressive conduct that is non-verbal.

4. Yes; flag burning is considered a form of expressive conduct that is protected under the First Amendment’s right to free speech.

Reasoning

Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justice Blackmun, Justice Scalia, and Justice Marshall. The court considered the First Amendment and whether its free speech protection extended to include nonverbal speech acts and whether Johnson’s action could be considered expressive conduct, in which case he would be able to invoke his First Amendment rights to protect him. The court agreed that “speech” as stated in the First Amendment goes beyond spoken and written word to protect acts, that Johnson’s intended message in burning the flag was made very clear, and that the content of his intended message cannot cancel out his right to express his ideas. Though the state argued it wanted to protect the peace and venerated national objects, the court found that Johnson’s conduct did not in any way threaten the peace or pose a threat to national unity as represented by the flag.

Concurrence

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a short concurrence in which he agreed with the decision and reasoning of the four fellow majority justices, but sympathized with the four justices who dissented. He remarked that sometimes the nature of the law and Constitution compelled a decision that the justices did not necessarily want to make, but that was right within the laws and freedoms of the Constitution.

Dissent

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, joined by Justices White and O’Connor, discussed in his dissenting opinion the importance of the American flag as a symbol respected more than any other in history. He debated he absolutism of free speech and whether limits should be implemented in the case of a venerated national object such as the flag.

Justice John Paul Stevens also wrote a dissenting opinion, in which he stated that the case involved “disagreeable conduct” of the defendant doing harm to an important national symbol and that the content of the defendant’s message was not relevant to the case.

Decision

The Supreme Court affirmed by a 5-4 decision the ruling of the criminal appeals court, finding that the petitioner’s interest in preventing the breach of peace did not hold up, as the defendant’s actions did not incite lawless behavior and that the defendant’s right to free expression of ideas through speech and conduct outweighed the petitioner’s interest in protecting the American flag as a symbol of unity.

Significance

The ruling in this case invalidated 48 state statutes prohibiting/criminalizing flag burning as unconstitutional. This decision maintained that flag burning is protected speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as it is expressive conduct and maintained that the First Amendment does not cover only vocal/verbal speech but other forms of speech and speech acts. Texas v. Johnson can be considered the landmark case within the issue of flag burning and a major case related to the intricacies of free speech.