I read a NY Times article today about a recent Tweet from Donald Trump – “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!” Not the most surprising thing I’ve seen Tweeted by Trump but the article was mostly good. Of course, the writer interviewed someone who questioned Trump’s understanding of the Constitution but that was expected from a NY Times article (boring). The interesting parts (to me) were the sections about the legal battles regarding the issue. The Supreme Court has ruled a couple of times that burning American flags is protected under the 1st amendment and also that the government cannot take away US citizenship without explicit consent (this I didn’t know). Multiple attempts to exclude flag-burning as protected speech have failed (including one championed by Hillary Clinton defining flag-burning as a form of “fighting words”).
It got me thinking about Washington D.C.
Washington D.C. overwhelmingly voted to become an additional state of these United States earlier in November (86% in favor). Now it’s up to Congress to approve or disapprove adding a 51st state. It should be noted that Washington D.C. already gets three votes in the Electoral College so this is about obtaining representation in Congress. As it’s very likely that all Washington D.C. representatives would be blue it’s very unlikely our red Congress will approve of adding it as a 51st state at this time. Political repercussions aside I think the elephant in the room here is the American flag itself.
Where exactly would the 51st star go? Would the old flags be void? What about all those tattoos? I actually think this is why the majority of Americans don’t want a 51st state (it’s true we don’t). I think many (most?) would see ANY changes to the American flag as some kind of blasphemy. Yes, there are lots of non-flag-related reasons not to add Washington D.C. or Puerto Rico to our current roster of states (and not just of the political persuasion) but I think the “gut reason” is that the American flag as a symbol is incredibly strong and changing it would be akin to desecrating the Constitution to a lot of American citizens.
I’ll bet a few of those who just weathered this post thought I was going to expostulate or endorse flag-burning and sitting for the National Anthem as forms of expression. Nope. It’s all about that 51st star baby!
Here are links to the article and some of the other stuff I was looking at:
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