The Golden Flag

CNN ran an article collecting people's letters about the Congress's most recent attempt to pass an Amendment to the Constitution that would ban flag-burning. And in most of the pro-Amendment letters, there seemed something--well, the only word that fits is idolatrous.

But isn't there an injunction somewhere that says something like "Thou shalt not worship false idols"? Wait, yes, here it is, in Exodus 20: 3-5:

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.

The flag is a symbol, and worthy of respect, yes, absolutely. But so is the bald eagle, which was so endangered by good Americans' use of DDT that it had to be placed on the Endangered Species list. A symbol is only valuable, and it seems absurd to say this, symbolically. In the same way that a bald eagle in Alaska is just as valuable--symbolically--as one in Cleveland (are there any in Cleveland?), so too is the flag on your lawn just as valuable--as a symbol--as the one that flies above the White House. And symbols are most valuable when they are flexible, when they serve multiple purposes: when they can serve both as a token of national pride while also serving as an instrument of protest. Seems to me that something so powerful is only enhanced by an occasional burning: it says, look at how free we are that we can even do this.
And getting all worked up over the physical object rather than what it represents, well hell, that's just idolatry.

Besides, if you want to talk about the desecration of a symbol, how about taking a mountain sacred to the natives who have worshipped there for centuries and then carving a bunch of faces into it?