Providing for consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 4) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing the Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 255, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 4) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing the Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.J. Res. 4.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H.J. Res. 4 is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would simply return to Congress the authority that it possessed for over 200 years to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States. H.J. Res. 4 does not outlaw flag desecration; rather, this proposal merely sets the boundaries by which Congress can enact subsequent implementing legislation, if it so chooses, to prohibit such conduct.

The flag is the most revered and beloved symbol of our great Nation, representing all that is American and reminding the world of our undying love of freedom and democracy. The flag serves as a shining bedrock of our principles and values as a country, leading our men and women into conflicts around the globe and draping the caskets of those same individuals when they return home after giving the ultimate sacrifice in defense of such values. It is the flag to which we pledge allegiance here in the halls of Congress and in schools throughout our country. It is this object and all that it represents that we as Americans hold so dear.

While the Federal Government and almost every single State validly protected the flag without constitutional objection for numerous years, this protection was circumscribed by the United States Supreme Court in Texas v. Johnson in 1989. In the Johnson case, a majority of five justices held that burning the flag was expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Congress responded to this decision in 1990 by enacting a Federal statute to outlaw such conduct in accordance with the Supreme Court's decision in Johnson. However, the Supreme Court that same year ruled in United States v. Eichman that the recently enacted Federal statute also violated the Constitution. Thus, the American people are now left with no other alternative but to amend the Constitution in order to protect their flag.

House Joint Resolution 4 will simply overturn these two erroneous Supreme Court decisions, restoring the original interpretation to the First Amendment that had persisted for over two centuries since the birth of our country. When considering the powers of our respective branches of government in effecting the will of the American people, we should be reminded of the words of Abraham Lincoln in his first inaugural address in 1861, ``If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.''

Thus, because the Constitution expressly designates ``We the People'' as possessing the ultimate authority in this great Nation, and not the Supreme Court, we as representatives of the people must respond and act according to the will of the people in approving this proposed constitutional amendment.

Contrary to what opponents of House Joint Resolution 4 will claim, this proposal does not amend the First Amendment or the Bill of Rights for the first time in history. Rather, it was the Supreme Court that first amended our constitutional rights and liberties as Americans in this area of the law in 1989 by denying the American people the authority to protect their flag. H.J. Res. 4 will simply restore this sacred right and the original understanding of the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights that had persisted since the very beginning of our country. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, the father of our Constitution, both agreed that the government could prohibit acts of flag desecration.

Rights guaranteed under the First Amendment are not unlimited. Rather, Americans are constrained in their speech to a certain degree, whether pursuant to libel and slander laws, perjury laws, laws against inciting breach of the peace or riots, or obscenity laws. Furthermore, conduct that is arguably associated with speech has also always been validly regulated. While someone seeking publicity or wanting to protest may think that the best method to convey a particular message may be to parade nude in Lafayette Square across from the White House, that form of conduct is illegal. H.J. Res. 4 simply seeks to give Congress the authority to prohibit another particular form of conduct, flag desecration, without regard to the speech being broadcasted during such conduct.

Those seeking to express themselves would be left with, as Chief Justice Rehnquist put it, ``a full panoply of other symbols and every conceivable form of verbal expression'' by which to make their ideas known. As the Supreme Court has stated, ``the First Amendment does not guarantee the right to employ every conceivable method of communication at all times and in all places.''

I urge my colleagues to recognize the wishes of the American people and restore the original interpretation and understanding of the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights to the Constitution by supporting this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), the author of the resolution.

(Mr. CUNNINGHAM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, the word seems to be around here that the Supreme Court decisions are sacrosanct and we should never amend the Constitution when the Congress and the several States believe the Supreme Court is wrong. I believe the Supreme Court is wrong in this, and that is why this amendment is before us.

But I point out that in three of the 17 instances since the Bill of Rights was ratified, the Congress and the States have amended the Constitution to reverse Supreme Court decisions. The 11th Amendment reversed the decision relative to the judicial power of the United States. The 14th Amendment reversed the Dred Scott decision. The 16th Amendment reversed the decision on the income tax. So, three of the 17 amendments that have been ratified since 1791 have reversed Supreme Court decisions that the Congress and the States have thought were erroneous.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence).

(Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), my distinguished predecessor as chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary.

(Mr. HYDE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Forbes).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I am getting a little sick of hearing that this is an assault on the first amendment. We are using constitutional processes to overturn a Supreme Court decision that made no sense.

Now, last year a lot of my colleagues, not me, voted for a campaign finance reform bill that significantly restricted people's rights to express themselves on political issues. And that was emaciated by a lower Federal court, and it probably will be declared unconstitutional as well by the Supreme Court. So let us be consistent, the first amendment is not absolute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hostettler).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul).

(Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte).

(Mr. GOODLATTE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, this proposed constitutional amendment does not restrict anybody from saying whatever they want to say about the flag, about the government, about their opinions of any public official, of any candidate for office, of the policies that have been made by the Federal Government, the State government or the local government. What it does do is to prohibit offensive acts, such as burning the flag or, in my own State, using the Johnson and Eichman decisions, the State Supreme Court said that defecating on the flag was an act that was a protected political expression under the first amendment to the United States Constitution.

The only way to put sense back into the law is to pass H.J. Res. 4.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Miller).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson).

(Mr. SAM JOHNSON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the Constitution of the United States was ratified and came into effect in 1789. For 200 years, nobody seriously said that desecrating the American flag violated the first amendment to the Constitution. In fact, the Federal Government, 48 States and the District of Columbia passed statutes declaring flag desecration criminal conduct and prescribing criminal penalties.

It was only after 200 years and the Vietnam War that a flag desecration case claiming that first amendment rights were violated reached the Supreme Court of the United States. And what were the facts of the Johnson case? The Johnson case did not involve protesting the Vietnam War. It was burning the flag in front of the 1984 Republican National Convention that was held in Dallas.

Five years later, the case reached the Supreme Court. They decided, by a 5 to 4 margin, that flag desecration was political expression that enjoyed constitutional protection. And that was the first time in over 200 years of this Constitution being affected that the courts ruled that that type of activity was constitutionally protected.

I agree with what Chief Justice Rehnquist said in the dissenting opinion: ``I cannot agree that the first amendment invalidates the act of Congress and the laws of 48 of the 50 States which made criminal the public burning of the flag.''

If Members agree that the first amendment does prohibit this, then vote ``no'' on the constitutional amendment. I do not impugn anybody's patriotism. This is a legitimately held political position. But if my colleagues think that the Constitution should allow a criminal statute to prevent the public desecration of the American flag, the only way this can be accomplished is through the strong medicine of amending the Constitution.

The Supreme Court has twice said that if this is attempted to be done by statute, the first amendment is violated. I think that the government should be able to prevent the physical desecration of the American flag no matter how it is done. That is why I support this amendment, and I would hope that over two-thirds of the Members of this House of Representatives will support this amendment when we vote on it shortly.

Mr. S0UDER. Mr. Speaker, for more than two hundred years, the American flag has occupied a unique position as the symbol of our nation. During the Second World War, U.S. Marines fought hand to hand against thousands of Japanese at Iwo Jima. Upon reaching the top of Mount Suribachi, a group of these Marines raised a piece of pipe and from one end fluttered a flag. This ascent cost nearly 6,000 American lives. As you know, the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery memorializes that event. There would seem to be little question about the power of Congress to prohibit the mutilation of this monument. The flag itself can be seen as a monument, subject to similar protection.

It is true that a person may, in a sense, ``own'' the flag. But this ownership is subject to special burdens and responsibilities. Congress has prescribed detailed rules for the design of the flag, the time and occasion of the flag's display, the position and manner of its display, respect for the flag and conduct during hoisting, and lowering and passing the flag. With the exception of Alaska and Wyoming, all the States have statutes prohibiting the burning of the flag.

When the desecration of the flag is used as a protest, far more than a single flag is being violated. The devotion of every American who has expended their blood, sweat, and tears for this great nation is being battered. This amendment takes on even more importance given the events of September 11th. After watching the horrific events unfold on television, our nation came together through the patriotic display of old glory. The flag became a rallying point and sent a message to our enemies that we will not back down.

I commend the gentleman from California for this important piece of legislation. As it is phrased, H.J. Res. 4 would permit Congress to enact laws addressing physical desecration of our flag. Passage of this legislation through both the House and Senate would allow the American people to vote on this amendment. In doing so we will not only affirm the right to speak one's opinions, but also to protect the symbol of those freedoms that thousands of Americans have died giving their last full measure of devotion to protect.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment and claim the time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt) graduated from one of the finest law schools in the country. His speech just concluded and his amendment showed that he learned his constitutional law well from Professor Robert Bork, who is one of the outstanding constitutional scholars in the country. The only difference between the Watt substitute amendment and the constitutional amendment introduced by the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) is the words ``not inconsistent with the first article of amendment to this Constitution.''

What his amendment does is constitutionally codify the Johnson and Eichman decisions that said that flag desecration is protected free speech by the first amendment to the United States Constitution. So the gentleman from North Carolina's qualifying phrase is legislative sleight of hand that will prevent any future Supreme Court from deciding they made a mistake in the Johnson decision and in the Eichman decision. For that reason and for that reason alone, this amendment should be rejected, because it does the exact opposite to what the gentleman from California and his cosponsors are attempting to do in House Joint Resolution 4. It writes into the Constitution Supreme Court decisions that a vast majority of the American public believe were erroneously decided.

Never before has Congress tried to do this. I just thank the Lord that they have not. Because if someone tried to constitutionally codify the separate but equal decisions of the United States Supreme Court in the late 1890s, Brown v. Board of Education would never have been possible and would never have been constitutional. That is one of the things that has given minorities in this country the opportunity for education, to be able to graduate from high school and go to a good college and go to the top law schools in the country. So I think that we should hit this amendment head-on. We should vote for it or vote against it, patriots all; but we should not attempt to put into the Constitution the effect of the United States Supreme Court decisions, two of them, in fact, that have brought us to this point here.

Let me repeat. The Watt substitute amendment puts into the Constitution the Johnson and the Eichman decisions that state that physical desecration of the American flag is conduct that is protected by the first amendment to the United States Constitution.

Vote ``no'' on the Watt substitute amendment and pass the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, there is a difference between the Court decisions on flag desecration and the Court decisions on burning crosses and painting swastikas on synagogues. On the one hand, the Court has said that flag desecration is protected by the first amendment as free speech or free political expression. The Supreme Court has never struck down an anticross-burning law or a hate crime law that makes it a crime to paint a swastika on a synagogue as political expression protected by the first amendment to the United States Constitution.

That is why we are here debating this constitutional amendment, because there are a lot of us that believe that the Supreme Court was wrong when they decided that desecrating the flag was political expression protected by the first amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, this debate here and now is not on the appropriation for the Department of Veterans Affairs; it is on whether or not the Congress can pass the constitutional amendment reversing two Supreme Court decisions and prohibiting the physical desecration of the American flag.

The gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), who is a veteran, and I am not, stated the position of every veterans organization in the country: They are for this.

The vote at hand is going to be on the Watts substitute amendment. As I stated in my earlier argument, what this substitute amendment does is constitutionally codify the Johnson and the Eichman decisions, which state

that flag desecration is protected free speech under the first amendment of the United States Constitution.

I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, what it does do is, in order to prevent flag desecration, it requires the Supreme Court of the United States to admit it made a mistake and expressly overrule both the Johnson and Eichman decisions. The Supreme Court of the United States does not overrule previous decisions very often. It did it in Brown v. The Board of Education. But not very often in other major areas, particularly in the interpretation of constitutional law, does the Supreme Court of the United States do it.

The way to hit this issue is head on. If you do not like this amendment, vote ``no,'' but do not adopt the Watts substitute amendment, which merely tosses the ball back to the Supreme Court, which twice has told us that flag desecration is constitutionally protected.

The only way to reverse what the Supreme Court has done for sure is to defeat the Watts substitute amendment and pass the underlying bill introduced by the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).

Mr. Speaker, I ask for a ``no'' vote on the substitute, a ``yes'' vote on passage of the constitutional amendment.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I want to make two points in this 1 minute.

Number one, the gentleman who just talked disparaged the Supreme Court because of one decision, that we should not respect that decision. It is the same Supreme Court that 2 years ago arrogated to itself the right to take away from the American people the choice of the Presidency and said do not finish counting the votes, we declare George Bush the President of the United States. That decision has been respected. Though on the merits and on the intellect, that decision belongs in the garbage heap of history because it was not an honest decision, it was not honestly intended. It was a results-oriented decision.

Secondly, the gentleman said that there are Members of this body who are not patriotic as seen by the votes against defense bills. The fact of the matter is, you can vote for a defense bill, you can vote against it based on whether you think that bill is best for your country or not. But to ascribe unpatriotic motives to differences of opinion is to disrespect the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. To ascribe unpatriotic motives to people who differ with you politically is the methodology of a Soviet commissar. It is not an argument that should be heard on this floor. It is an argument that destroys liberty. It destroys freedom of speech.

And whether a particular defense bill was good or too small, or bad or good or deserved to be voted for should be addressed on the merits intellectually and not by disparaging the motives and saying that someone who votes against it is unpatriotic. That argument we could hear from Mr. Stalin, not from someone on this floor.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, today we are enduring the annual Republican rite of spring, a proposed amendment to the Bill of Rights to restrict what it calls flag desecration.

Why spring? Because the calendar tells us that June 14 is Flag Day, and then, of course, we have July 4. Members need to send out a press release extolling the need to protect the flag, as if the flag needed protection by Congress. We do not see a great epidemic of flag burning. This amendment is truly an answer in search of a problem.

The flag is a symbol of a great Nation and of the fundamental freedoms for which this Nation stands. If the flag needs protection at all, it is from Members of Congress who value the symbol more than the freedoms that the flag represents, and would, in fact, limit those freedoms to protect the symbol.

The argument that we must, for the first time in our Nation's history, amend the Constitution to limit freedom of speech because the flag stands for freedom would sound like a bad joke if the danger to the First Amendment were not so real. I warn my colleagues, once we get into the business of amending the Constitution, every time someone does something we do not like, there will be no end to it. We have never in the 200 years of this country so far, of this Republic, amended the Bill of Rights, and we should not start now.

There is unpopular speech that people find offensive, unpopular religions that people do not like. We had a Member of the House on the floor a few years ago excoriate the Army for allowing a wicked religious service on an Army base. The man with the protest sign in a crowd of people favoring the President and his policies, he was threatened with arrest if he did not leave or get rid of his sign because it did not agree with the other signs. Maybe some of our Republican friends think we need a constitutional amendment for protesting against Republican Presidents. Quite frankly, the crass political use of the flag to question the patriotism of those who value our fundamental freedoms is a greater insult to those who died in the service of our Nation than even the burning of the flag. It is the civic equivalent of taking the Lord's name in vain.

People have rights in this country that supersede public opinion, even strongly held public opinion. If we do not preserve those rights, the flag would have been desecrated far beyond the capability of any individual with a cigarette lighter. Let there be no doubt, this amendment is aimed directly at unpopular political ideas.

Current Federal law says that the preferred way to dispose of a tattered and old flag is to burn it, but there are those who would criminalize the same act if it was done to express political dissent. So if you burn the flag, if you physically burn the flag while standing around saying nice things, pleasant things, platitudes about patriotism, then that is a wonderful thing to do. But if you burn the flag while criticizing the conduct of the current administration or some political decision, then you will be arrested.

Is the act of burning the flag any different in those two instances? No. What is different is the words said in association with it. In one instance, the words are pleasant and nice and therefore protected by the First Amendment; and in the other instance, the words are unpleasant and disagreeable and, therefore, we are going to pass a constitutional amendment to throw someone in jail for uttering the wrong words while he burns the flag, because if he uttered the nice words while he burned the flag, that would be the correct way of disposing of the flag.

Clearly, the Supreme Court was right, it is the expression of unpopular political opinions that this amendment is aimed at, and that is why this amendment should not be passed because we should protect the right to utter all opinions in this country, even those we think are harmful because bad ideas should be driven out of the arena of public opinion by good ideas, not by repression by the State or by the police. That is why we have the Bill of Rights, and that is why this amendment should not pass.

One other example, and that is if someone produced a movie or play in which actors impersonated Nazi soldiers, and during the course of that play, the Nazi soldiers trampled on the flag to show the contempt the Nazis had for freedom and the United States, no one would think of arresting the actors because they know they did not mean it. They would know they were showing what Nazis thought of the flag and the United States, not what the actors think. So it is clearly the ideas associated with the act of desecrating the flag, it is the speech that we are criminalizing here, and that is why the Supreme Court was right to say we cannot criminalize speech.

We heard in the hearings conducted before the Committee on the Judiciary from a Vietnam veteran who has been in a wheelchair for the last 30 years as a result of his combat wounds in Vietnam. He made clear he did not want his sacrifice to be used to destroy the freedoms for which he fought and for which many of his friends made the ultimate sacrifice. I would urge my colleagues to listen to all veterans and understand that those who support this amendment do not speak for all veterans.

General Colin Powell, for example, had this to say about this amendment a few years ago, ``The First Amendment exists to ensure that freedom of speech and expression applies not just to that with which we agree or disagree, but also that which we find outrageous. I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer a few miscreants. The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away.''

Jim Warner, a Vietnam veteran and prisoner of the North Vietnamese from October 1967 to March 1973, wrote, ``The fact is, the principles for which we fought, for which our comrades died, are advancing everywhere upon the earth, while the principles against which we fought are everywhere discredited and rejected. The flag burners have lost, and their defeat is the most fitting and thorough rebuke of their principles which the human mind could devise. Why do we need to do more? An act intended merely as an insult is not worthy of our fallen comrades. It is the sort of thing our enemies did to us, but we are not them, and we must conform to a different standard. Now, when the justice of our principles is everywhere vindicated, the cause of human liberty demands that this amendment be rejected. Rejecting this amendment would not mean that we agree with those who burn our flag, or even that they have been forgiven. It would, instead, tell the world that freedom of expression means freedom, even for those expressions we find repugnant.''

I would add that rejection of this amendment would mean that we understand that democracy in the United States and our protection of freedom of expression in the United States is stronger than the ill will and the venom that motivates people who might desecrate our flag, and that we do not need a constitutional amendment to protect us against them.

These thoughts are echoed by Terry Anderson, a former U.S. Marine staff sergeant and Vietnam veteran who was held hostage in Lebanon, who wrote:

``This constitutional amendment is an extremely unwise restriction of every American's constitutional rights. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the first amendment protects symbolic acts under its guarantee of free speech. Burning or otherwise damaging a flag is offensive to many, including me, but it harms no one and is so obviously an act of political speech that I'm amazed anyone could disagree with the Court.''

Mr. Speaker, people have died for this Nation and the rights which this flag so proudly represents. Let us not destroy the freedoms and the way of life for which they made the ultimate sacrifice. Let us not demean our freedoms. Let us not demean our country. Let us not for the first time in the history amend the Bill of Rights to say we cannot be trusted with that freedom. Let us not pass this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green).

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Indiana (Ms. Carson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, last year this House and the other body and the President all cooperated in passing legislation to improve campaign financing techniques. Some people say that regulated speech. What it did was regulate expenditures of money. Many people do not consider money as speech. It is a different issue.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner).

(Mr. TANNER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

(Mrs. JONES of Ohio asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Ackerman).

(Mr. ACKERMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the minority whip.

(Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Marshall).

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have left, please?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, first let me comment on what was just said by the distinguished gentleman from Texas, by reading an article written by a prisoner of war named James Warner. He wrote in ``The Retired Officer'' on September of 1989 of his experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He writes as follows:

``We could subvert them,'' meaning his torturers, the North Vietnamese, ``by teaching them about freedom through our example. We could show them the power of ideas. I did not appreciate this power before I was a prisoner of war. I remember one interrogation, where I was shown a photograph of some Americans protesting the war by burning a flag. There, the officer,'' that is the enemy officer, ``there, the officer said, people in your country protest against your cause. That proves that you are wrong. No, I said, that proves that I am right. In my country we are not afraid of freedom, even if it means that people disagree with us. The officer was on his feet in an instant, his face purple with rage. He smashed his fist onto a table and screamed at me to shut up. While he was ranting, I was astonished to see pain, compounded by fear in his eyes. I have never forgotten that look, nor have I forgotten the satisfaction I felt at using his tool, the picture of the burning flag, against him.''

That is the close of the quote from this article from ``The Retired Officer'' by James Warner, former prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Mr. Speaker, the truth of the matter is we have heard today that desecration of the flag ought to be made unconstitutional because it is not valid speech. True, the first amendment is not absolute. We do not allow people to yell fire in a crowded theater unless there is evidence that there is a real fire. The Supreme Court ruled that many years ago. But the core protection of the first amendment is for ideas, for outrageous ideas, for obnoxious ideas, for ideas that we find horrible and offensive and dangerous.

Our philosophy, what makes this country different and unique, is that this country is built on a foundation, the foundation being the belief in freedom, in liberty, in the fact that, not always the case but we fervently believe in the fact that good ideas will drive out of the marketplace of bad ideas; that good speech will defeat bad speech. And we do not legislate against bad speech; we do not legislate against speech that we disagree with or find outrageous.

Now, we have heard, of course, that we are not talking about speech here, we are talking about expressive acts. But the fact of the matter is, again, we are talking about speech. We are talking about speech that people are frightened of and outraged about because it offends them. Because, again, the very acts we would be outlawing or permitting Congress to outlaw with this amendment would not, by anybody's stretch of the imagination, be outlawed unless accompanied by the wrong speech.

Again, as the gentleman from Virginia earlier today told us, and as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the recommended manner, recommended by the law, of disposing of a flag is to burn it. So, again, if you burn the flag, and while you burn it you say respectful things, that is wonderful. But if you burn the flag while saying what a terrible policy the current administration is following or if you burn the flag while saying what a terrible policy we are conducting and that we do not like this country, then we would make that criminal. Why? Not because the act of the flag burning is any different than when it was done with respectful words, but because in the one case the words were respectful and in the other case the words were obnoxious.

I agree the words are obnoxious. But the whole idea of freedom is to protect obnoxious words, especially obnoxious words or words that I or you may regard as obnoxious, though someone else may regard as fine and intelligent. That is their privilege. That is what freedom is about. The freedom of speech is not freedom for what we agree with, but freedom for what we find outrageous. Not just disagreeable, but outrageous.

When someone criticizes our country and says the war we are fighting is wrong, or the conduct of our troops is terrible, or whatever they may say that we may find disagreeable, outrageous and horrible, the glory of this country is that we give them the freedom to say it. And when someone burns a flag, and again there is no epidemic of flag burning, this amendment is really directed not at an existent problem, or has not existed really in the last 30 years of any size, but when you burn a flag and say respectful things, that is okay, because the law says that is okay; but when you burn a flag and say disrespectful things, that is not okay, what these circumstances say and that what we are really legislating against is the speech and not the act.

The act, accompanied by the right circumstances, would never be outlawed. We would not prosecute people who desecrated the flag as part of a movie or a play when they were portraying enemy soldiers, Nazi soldiers, or Chinese soldiers in the Korean War, because we do not think they mean it. What do they not mean? The speech. It is the ideas and the speech that we are outlawing by such an amendment. That is at the core of protected speech, at the core of the first amendment, at the core of the values we are supposed to hold dear. And that is why this amendment is so wrongheaded and ought not to be adopted.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, even before we were a nation, we had our flags. Different from today's to be sure. But serving the same purpose--symbols of unity, and of our hopes, achievements, glory, and high resolve.

Brave New England patriots faced down British regulars at a place called Bunker Hill under the Continental Flag which prominently featured a pine tree.

``Don't Tread on Me,'' said the colonists in the South, and a coiled rattlesnake on their flag reinforced that message.

The Grand Union Flag went to sea with John Paul Jones and marched under George Washington in the early days of our Revolution. By combining the British Union Jack with thirteen red and white stripes it reflected the thinking of the colonists during that time: allegiance to the Crown, but willing to fight for their rights as Englishmen.

That thinking had changed, however, by July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence--``That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States''--set us on a new course, from which there was no turning back. It was a realization that a people could not at once fight against the king and at the same time profess their loyalty to him. And, it meant that the new United States would need a national flag.

On June 14, 1777--the day we now celebrate as Flag Day--the Continental Congress adopted the following brief resolution: ``Resolved, that the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white: that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.''

It is now believed that Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, designed the first national flag that legend attributes to Betsy Ross. For his services, he submitted Congress a bill for nine dollars. Of course, government in 1777 was not really much different from government today. Hopkinson never got paid.

So, we had a national flag, the ``Stars and Stripes.'' In 1792, the first version with thirteen stars in a circle appeared. In 1795, the flag was changed to recognize the entry of Vermont and Kentucky into the Union with the addition of two stars and two stripes. This flag of fifteen stars and fifteen stripes figured in many stirring episodes. It was the first flag to be flown over a fortress of the Old World when it was raised at Tripoli in 1805. It was flown at the Battle of Lake Erie and by Andrew Jackson at New Orleans. And it was flown at our young nation's most inspiring moment.

In 1812, our nation had declared war on Great Britain because of British seizure of neutral U.S. trading vessels, and the impressment of American seamen into service on British ships. The British, preoccupied with Napoleon, were not amused. They were even less amused when we sent forth speedy privateers to seize their merchant ships and to frustrate their heavily gunned men-of-war.

In 1814, with Napoleon exiled to the island of Elba, the British determined to put the upstart former colonists in their place. They dispatched a 50-ship expeditionary force--veteran soldiers and sailors from the world's strongest military power. Up the Chesapeake Bay they came, and on August 24 and 25, 1814, they burned Washington. Their next target: Baltimore--third largest city in the U.S., a rich trading center, and home to many of the fleet privateers that had humiliated the proud Royal Navy.

As the British moved on Baltimore, one thing blocked their way--Fort McHenry, whose guns dominated the channels leading into Baltimore Harbor. Unless they could get past the fort, the British Navy could not support its ground forces whose advance on the city had been stalled.

So, at dawn on September 13, a 25-hour bombardment began. At the same time, a 35-year-old American lawyer was being held on board a British ship pending the end of the battle. Francis Scott Key watched the ``rockets red glare'' and ``the bombs bursting in air'' through the night. At the first light of dawn, Key was relieved to see that Fort McHenry's giant flag--30 feet by 42 feet--``The Star Spangled Banner''--did indeed still wave over ``the land of the free and the home of the brave.'' Inspired by the sight, he took pen in hand and gave us what would become our National Anthem.

The burning of Washington and the victory at Ft. McHenry united our young nation like nothing before had done. We emerged from the War of 1812, with a new national identity, confidence, and patriotism, a recovering economy, and a place in the world. And we continued to grow--to the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and beyond with new states joining the union and the number of stars in that field of blue growing.

Less than 50 years after the end of the War of 1812, our flag would face one of its greatest challenges. As our nation was split asunder in a great civil war, and its ability to endure as one hung in the balance, courage related to the flag often spelled the difference between victory and defeat.

Missionary Ridge, Tennessee, November, 1863. A key link between the east and west for the Confederacy. Confederate troops entrenched along a 400-foot-high, seven-mile-long summit. Sixty Union regiments under General George Thomas attacked positions at the foot of the ridge, and then, unexpectedly, surged up the slope. Flag bearers led the way. When one fell, another stepped forward to grab the colors, and the advanced continued. A young First Lieutenant--not yet 20 years old--caught the flag of the 24th Wisconsin as it was about to fall, and carried it to the crest. Arthur MacArthur's bravery earned him a battlefield promotion to major and the Medal of Honor that day. Many of you here today may have served under his son, Douglas, in the Pacific or Korea. In all, seven flag bearers won the Medal of Honor at Missionary Ridge. At day's end, the flags of 60 Union regiments lined the summit.

The War ended and the Union was preserved. And the flag proved as inspiring in peace as it was in war. In 1868, a former Union Army Sergeant, Gilbert Bates, set out to carry the Stars and Stripes from Vicksburg, Mississippi, to Washington, D.C., to prove to friends back in Wisconsin that we were once again one nation. Crowds cheered him at every town and village as he marched through the heart of the Old Confederacy. Ironically, and maybe today we could say prophetically, Sergeant Bates and his flag encountered real hostility and opposition only in our nation's capital.

Westward we moved, behind the flag. Across the Wide Missouri, and along the South Platte to the Rockies, and beyond to Oregon and California. South to Santa Fe and the Rio Grande--conquering a wilderness, settling a continent, and fulfilling our destiny. New stars added to the flag and more people to enjoy the blessings of liberty it embodies: people in the new lands, and immigrants from the Old World-- the ``huddled masses yearning to breathe free.''

Our flag went to foreign shores. Up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish American War ending four centuries of Spanish colonialism in the New World. At Veracruz, on the Gulf coast of Mexico, its honor was defended by brave sailors and marines. ``Over there'' it went with a Missourian, General John Pershing, in the ``War To End All Wars.''

Our flag was tattered, but not lowered at Pearl Harbor. And we rallied behind it, lifted it higher. We took it ashore at Normandy, and across the Rhine with Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton, and Hitler's ``Thousand Year Reich,'' the worst tyranny the world has yet known, crumbled at its advance. Across the South Pacific it went, island by island. In 1944, the most dramatic flag raising in American history, on a rocky Pacific island called Iwo Jima. When the sun rose the next day on that flag atop Mount Suribachi, the sun of Japanese Imperialism began to set.

The flag was with us: In Korea helping to preserve democracy for half of a divided nation. In Vietnam, where brave American POWs fashioned handmade flags to defy their captors. It went to the moon with the astronauts of Apollo 11.

Yes, our flag has stood by us--leading us, inspiring us, sustaining us--in all of our national endeavors, in war and in peace, for over 200 years.

Now, sadly, it seems that some people don't want to stand by our flag. The Supreme Court has said that it is all right to desecrate our flag, to burn it even, in the name of free speech. ``Government,'' says the Court, ``may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.''

I agree that everyone in this country has the right to make his views known on any issue, no matter how irrational, how wrong, or how unpopular those views might be. But does that mean that every form of conduct is permissible as a means of exercising rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution? I say no. And I say so as a student of law and of history. The framers of the Bill of Rights used words carefully to convey a precise meaning. The First Amendment to the Constitution says ``Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, . . .'' It says nothing about ``expression.''

Legal precedent and common sense tells us that there can be limits on conduct which are not inconsistent with First Amendment rights. Consider some extreme examples: Would anyone, even the Supreme Court, contend that we must permit human sacrifice under the guise of free exercise of religion? Would someone be allowed to blow up the Lincoln Memorial to express a political view?

Flag burning does not merit First Amendment protection. It is conduct that is offensive and provocative to the overwhelming majority of Americans. Moreover, it is unnecessary. Any point of view that can be expressed by flag burning can be better expressed in a manner that is reasoned, rational and more effective in communicating an idea or attempting to persuade others.

We have a great system of government, and one reason it is so great is that if you disagree with a government action, even a decision of the highest court in the land, you can work to change it.

Therefore, I support legislation being considered by the House of Representatives today that will create a Constitutional Amendment that will allow Congress and the States to ban flag burning and other similar forms of flag desecration. The process of changing the Constitution is not fast and easy. The framers wanted to make amending the Constitution a difficult, deliberative process.

I am confident that a Constitutional Amendment can be passed. But if it fails, or if it stalls, we can move in other areas. We can redraft and enact new flag desecration statutes that attempt to meet the Court's objections to the Texas statute. If those new statutes won't pass muster, we'll enact new ones.

We can do still more. Our children must be taught to respect the flag not only in our schools, but by our example. We must instruct them to display it and use it properly and salute it appropriately. We must encourage our children and every future generation to value the freedoms we enjoy and to stand tall and proud when they say, ``I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America . . .'' We must instill in them a strong sense of the heritage embodied in our flag, and the pride of being an American. Finally, we must ensure that they continue to recognize and honor the great sacrifices made by previous generations of Americans, many of whom gave ``the last full measure of devotion'' so that we could live free.

The poet Edgar A. Guest said it best when he penned:

The Boy and the Flag

I want my boy to love his home, his Mother, yes, and me:

I want him, wheresoe'er he'll roam, With us in thought to be.

I want him to love what is fine, Nor let his standards drag,

But, Oh! I want this boy of mine To love This country's flag!

Let me take a moment and put a few things in perspective. As much as the Supreme Court decision has disappointed me, it is in the final analysis no real threat to our nation. Our flag stands for too much to be brought down by matches lit by those who would desecrate it. Its glory cannot be diminished by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. It cannot be threatened by any enemy, foreign or domestic. If they step on it, write on it, tear it to shreds, even burn it to ashes, we'll just raise it up again, and it'll fly higher and more gloriously than ever before.

A few years ago, we had a flag day ceremony in the House of Representatives. County-western singer Johnny Cash recited these lyrics that he had written:

Ragged Old Flag

(By Johnny Cash)

I walked through a county courthouse square

On a park bench an old man was sitting there

I said, ``Your old courthouse is kinda run down.''

He said, ``Naw, it'll do for our little town.''

I said, ``Your old flag pole is leaned a little bit,''

And that's a ragged old flag you got hanging on it.''

He said, ``Have a seat.'' And I sat down.

``Is this the first time you've been to our little town?''

I said, ``I think it is.'' He said, ``I don't like to brag,

But we're kind of proud of that ragged old flag.''

``You see, we got a little hole in that flag there

When Washington took it across the Delaware

And it got powder burned the night Francis Scott Key

Sat up watching it, writing `Say Can you see'

It got a bad rip in New Orleans

With Packingham and Jackson pulling at its seams

And it almost fell at the Alamo,

Beside the Texas flag, but, she waved on though

She got cut with a sword at Chancellorsville

And she got cut again at Shiloh Hill

There was Robert E. Lee, Beauregard and Bragg

The South wind blew hard on that Ragged Old Flag

On Flanders field in World War One

She got a big hole from a Bertha gun

She turned blood red in world War Two,

She hung limp and low by the time it was through

She was in Korea and Viet Nam

She went where she was sent by he Uncle Sam

She waved from our ships upon the briny foam

And now they've about quit waving her back here at home

In her own good land she's been abused

She's been burned, dishonored, denied, refused

And now the government for which she stands

Is scandalized throughout the land

And she's getting threadbare and she's wearing thin

But she's in good shape for the shape she's in

Cause she's been through the fire before

And I believe she can take a whole lot more

So we raise her up every morning

Bring her down slow every night

We don't let her touch the ground

And we fold her up right.

On second thought, . . . I do like to brag,

Cause I'm mighty proud of that ragged Old Flag.''

Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support H.J. Res. 4 and to give Old Glory the respect it deserves.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I have not been involved in the debate up to this point on the proposed constitutional amendment, but I want to commend the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary and my colleagues who have conducted this debate up to this point on the quality of the debate. This is always a debate which I think has the capacity to bring out the best of the Members of our body. It does not always do that because there are strongly held positions, and sometimes emotion overtakes the day and we see the debate deteriorate. There have been instances when that has happened today, but by and large, I think this has been a high-quality debate, and I want to compliment my colleagues for maintaining the high quality of that debate.

I was, at one point, the ranking member on the Subcommittee on the Constitution, occupying the position now held by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler); and during my time in service as the ranking member of that subcommittee, I realized that the quality of the debate on this proposed constitutional amendment was not the kind of quality that I really wanted to be involved in.

What I saw was that Members who supported the proposed constitutional amendment would come to the floor and they would claim that Members who opposed the constitutional amendment were somehow unpatriotic; and Members who opposed the proposed constitutional amendment and were on the opposite side from the proponents of the amendment would come to the floor, and they would accuse the other side of being somehow unpatriotic. And I would have to admit that when I first became a party to this debate, I was a part of that name-calling process.

I thought that anybody who really supported the first amendment to the Constitution had to respect, even if they did not admire or like, they had to respect the right of people who wanted to express themselves in opposition to various kinds of injustices that were taking place in our society by expressing themselves verbally, expressing themselves through political action, expressing themselves by even burning or desecrating the American flag.

I thought it was a fairly simple proposition because I was not listening very carefully to the people who were on the other side of that debate, and I was not honoring the strong positions and commitments that they held to the fact that the flag was somehow different and that burning or desecrating the flag was somehow different than other kinds of free speech that citizens could engage in.

And then I started to listen to what the other side was saying, and I started to study this issue with a little more intensity, and I concluded that it could not possibly be the case that you could have a five-person majority on a United States Supreme Court that had nine members, and the court was split five people on one side and four people on the other side, and this not be a very, very difficult issue.

Can Members imagine that Justice Scalia supports the position that I am advocating here that when one burns the flag, they are engaging in protected speech; yet Justice Rehnquist, somebody who I think most people think is pretty close philosophically to Justice Scalia, takes exactly the opposite position.

I tried to imagine during the course of that debate whether Justice Scalia ever looked at Justice Rehnquist and said, ``You are unpatriotic''; or on the other hand, whether Justice Rehnquist looked at Justice Scalia and said, ``You are unpatriotic.''

So I started to listen to my good friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson) and what he was saying, and I said, those Members believe as vigorously in the position they are asserting as the Members on our side believe in the position we are asserting, and we could have a high-quality debate about this flag burning amendment if we honored each other's positions and opinions and really came in and talked about the merits of this proposed constitutional amendment as opposed to calling each other unpatriotic.

So I decided I would offer an amendment which simply says, not inconsistent with the first article of amendment to this Constitution, the Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.

I thought that if we framed the issue in that context, we could really have an honest debate not only about what the physical desecration of the flag might consist of, but we could have an honest debate about what is or is not protected by the first amendment.

Now, I should say straight off that my opinion is that adding to the underlying proposed constitutional amendment, which itself says the Congress shall have the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States, simply adding to that that whatever statutory act we take as a Congress must be consistent with the first amendment to the Constitution, I pretty much assumed was a given. And a number of my colleagues who have supported the underlying proposed constitutional amendment have said, we do not want to do harm to the first amendment, we are not trying to cut off speech. So it seems to me that at some point, even if we pass the underlying proposed constitutional amendment that we are debating here, the one that says that Congress shall have the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States, that at some point the Supreme Court is going to be called upon to make that constitutional amendment reconciled with the first amendment, which says that this Congress shall make no law that tramples on the right of free speech.

So it may be that the amendment that I am offering here is kind of a redundancy. I am just basically saying that whatever we do as a Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag must be done consistently with the first amendment to the Constitution, not anything revolutionary here.

Well, what does the first amendment mean? I thought I knew what the first amendment meant. I had a good law school education from what they tell me is one of the best law schools in the country, Yale University. Some of my colleagues will differ about whether it is the best or the second best or in the top 10 or in the top 30, but most people agree that it is at least one of the good universities, one of the good law schools in the country; and I will tell Members, Mr. Robert Bork was my constitutional law professor. We had some free-wheeling discussions in that class about what the first amendment meant. I thought once I got out of law school, I understood fully what the first amendment was all about.

And then I went back to North Carolina, and I went into the practice of law, and one day my senior law partner, a gentleman by the name of Julius Chambers, came to me and said, I want you to go down to eastern North Carolina and represent some Native Americans who have been charged with parading and threatening with a tomahawk in a demonstration that has taken place out there. They have been

charged with resisting arrest and all of the things that people get charged with when the police do not like what they are out there parading about, and these Native Americans had been arrested, four or five of them had been arrested. And my senior law partner sent me to eastern North Carolina to defend them against the criminal charges.

I did not know much more about those criminal charges until I got down to eastern North Carolina, and I sat down with my clients, and as I started to talk to them about what they were demonstrating about, they looked at me and they said, well, we did not want to go to school with black people. So we were out there demonstrating against going to school with black people. So I kind of swallowed hard and finished that day of activity, and I went back to my law office in Charlotte and I confronted my senior law partner and said, Julius, why would you send me down to eastern North Carolina as a black man to defend people who were out there demonstrating against going to school with black people?

Julius Chambers looked me straight in the eye, and he told me that day what the first amendment was all about. He simply said to me, ``Don't you believe in the first amendment?''

Those are words that I have never forgotten. That same law firm represented the Ku Klux Klan when they wanted the right to demonstrate and it was unpopular.

This is a difficult issue, and there are patriots on both sides of this issue. This is not about whether one side has a monopoly on patriotism or the other side has a monopoly on patriotism. This is a difficult issue because we love the flag and the one kind of common theme that I was able to gather from all of this discussion over all these years because we have been debating this constitutional amendment for 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 years. Ever since I have been here, it seems like, we have this constitutional amendment.

But the one thing that I think we all have agreed upon is that none of us like people who burn the flag. We are all patriots. There are 435 of us in this body. Every single one of us represents over 600,000 people. Can you imagine 600,000 people sending somebody to this Congress who was not patriotic? This, my friends, is not about whether you are a patriot or not. It is about your idea of what the first amendment truly means. It could not be that you could have Justice Brennan, Justice Marshall, Justice Blackmun, Justice Scalia and Justice Kennedy saying that this is protected speech when you burn the flag in certain contexts and them be not patriotic. These men are not unpatriotic. And it could not be that Justice Rehnquist and Justice Stevens and Justice White and Justice O'Connor are out to lunch on this issue, either. This is a difficult issue. And I think the important thing here is that we should not minimize the difficulty of the issue and we should not minimize each other because some of us happen to be on one side of this issue and some of us happen to be on the other side.

I value the first amendment, not that the people on the other side do not value it, too. I am sure they do. But in the process of having the Congress draft and pass a law to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag, the last thing I want is for us to do it in such a way that violates the first amendment to the Constitution. That amendment has been there for years and years and years and it has served us well. Nobody has tested this new amendment that is being offered here today which says the Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag. Who knows what the United States Supreme Court might read into that. But what I can tell you is that our first amendment has served this country well. And people have fought and died for the right of people to express themselves. Maybe they do not like them expressing themselves by burning the flag, but it is considered by some people protected speech. And it cannot be, even in current day, more recent times, that Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, who happens to believe that this proposed constitutional amendment is unnecessary and ill advised, surely we would not dare to call him unpatriotic.

Whatever we do, my colleagues, I simply implore us to do it consistent with the first amendment to the Constitution. And if we are able to do that, then I think we will have served our country well. What I suspect is that Congress wants to just, let's pass this amendment and leave the difficult part, which is crafting something that really prohibits the physical desecration of the flag without trampling on the first amendment, to a future time. Let us just finesse that issue. This proposed amendment in the nature of a substitute does not allow us to finesse it. What it says is that whatever we do when it comes time to start drafting our statute that prohibits the physical desecration of the flag must be done consistent with the first amendment to the Constitution.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis) hit the nail on the head that this is about our system. I have the utmost confidence in our system. This is not really about those two Supreme Court opinions, because a different composition of the Supreme Court may well say that flag burning is not prohibited, that it is protected speech or is not protected speech. The first amendment will continue to say what it says.

But I respect the system under which we operate that allows the Supreme Court to be the ultimate arbiter of whether we have violated the first amendment or not.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chairman yielding, because the chairman has made that point several times. Does the chairman understand that future Supreme Courts may, in fact, have a completely different interpretation of that, and that my amendment does not say anything about those decisions? It just respects the system under which we are operating.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule, although unenthusiastically. I am not too excited about this process, and certainly I am not very excited about this proposal to amend the Constitution. As for my viewpoint, I see the amendment as very unnecessary and very dangerous. I want to make a few points along those lines.

It has been inferred too often by those who promote this amendment that those who oppose it are less patriotic, and I think that is unfair. And an earlier statement was made by the gentleman from Florida that everybody here is patriotic and nobody's patriotism should be challenged.

It has also been said that if one does not support this amendment to the flag that they are disloyal to the military, and that cannot possibly be true. I have served 5 years in the military, and I do not feel less respectful of the military because I have a different interpretation on how we should handle the flag. But nevertheless, I think what we are doing here is very serious business because it deals with more than just the flag.

First off, I think what we are trying to achieve through an amendment to the Constitution is to impose values on people, that is to teach people patriotism with their definition of what patriotism is. But we cannot force values on people; we cannot say there will be a law that a person will do such and such because it is disrespectful if they do not, and therefore, we are going to make sure that people have these values that we want to teach. Values in a free society are done voluntarily, not through coercion, and certainly not by the law, because the law implies that there are guns, and that means the Federal Government and others will have to enforce these laws.

Here we are, amending the Constitution for a noncrisis. How many cases of flag burning have we seen? I have seen it on television a few times in the last year, but it was done on foreign soil, by foreigners, who had become angry at us over our policies, but I do not see that many Americans in the streets burning up flags. There were probably a lot more earlier in previous decades, but in recent years, it averages out to about eight, about eight cases a year, and they are not all that horrendous. It involves more vandalism, teenagers taking flags and desecrating the flag and maybe burning it, and there are laws against that.

This is all so unnecessary. There are already laws against vandalism. There are State laws that say they cannot do it and they can be prosecuted. So this is overkill.

As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court has helped to create this. I know a lot of people depend on the Supreme Court to protect us, but in many ways, I think the Supreme Court has hurt us. So I agree with those who are promoting this amendment that the Supreme Court overreacted, because I think the States should have many more prerogatives than they do. Many states have these laws, and I believe that we should have a supreme court that would allow more solutions to occur at the State level. They would be imperfect, no doubt, it would not be perfect protection of liberty by State laws. But let me tell my colleagues, when we come here as politicians and superpatriots and we pass amendments to the Constitution, that will be less than perfect, then it will be just like the Supreme Court--a poor national solution.

It is a ruling for everyone, and if we make a mistake, it affects everybody in every State, and that is what I am afraid we are doing here.

The First Amendment has been brought up on several occasions, and I am sure it will be mentioned much more in general debate. This amendment does not directly violate the First Amendment, but what it does, it gives the Congress the authority to write laws that will violate the First Amendment, and this is where the trouble is. Nothing but confusion and litigation can result.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this amendment. I do not believe much good will come of it. A lot of good intentions are put into the effort, but I see no real benefit.

It was mentioned earlier that those who supported campaign finance laws were inconsistent. And others would say that we do not have to worry about the first amendment when we are dealing with the flag amendments. But I would suggest there is another position. Why can we not be for the first amendment when it comes to campaign finance reform and not ask the government to regulate the way we spend our money and advertise, at the same time we protect the first amendment here?

It seems that that consistency is absent in this debate.

It is said by the chairman of the committee that he does not want to hear much more about the first amendment. We have done it before, so therefore it must be okay. But we should not give up that easily.

He suggested that we have amended the Constitution before when the courts have ruled a certain way. And he says absolutely right, we can do that and we have done that. But to use the 16th amendment as a beautiful example of how the Congress solves problems, I would expect the same kind of dilemma coming out of this amendment as we have out of the 16th amendment which, by the way, has been questioned by some historians as being correctly ratified.

I think one of our problems has been that we have drifted away from the rule of law, we have drifted away from saying that laws ought to be clear and precise and we ought to all have a little interpretation of the laws.

The gentleman earlier had said that there are laws against slander so therefore we do violate the first amendment. Believe me, I have never read or heard about a legislative body or a judge who argued that you can lie and commit fraud under the first amendment. But the first amendment does say ``Congress shall write no laws.'' That is precise. So even the laws dealing with fraud and slander should be written by the States. This is not a justification for us to write an amendment that says Congress shall write laws restricting expression through the desecration of the flag.

So we do not know what the laws are, but when the laws are written, that is when the conflict comes.

This amendment, as written so far, does not cause the conflict. It will be the laws that will be written and then we will have to decide what desecration is and many other things.

Earlier in the debate it was said that an individual may well be unpatriotic if he voted against a Defense appropriation bill. I have voted against the Defense appropriation bill because too much money in the Defense budget goes to militarism that does not really protect our country. I do not believe that is being unpatriotic.

Mr. Speaker, let me summarize why I oppose this Constitutional amendment. I have myself served 5 years in the military, and I have great respect for the symbol of our freedom. I salute the flag, and I pledge to the flag. I also support overriding the Supreme Court case that overturned State laws prohibiting flag burning. Under the Constitutional principle of federalism, questions such as whether or not Texas should prohibit flag burning are strictly up to the people of Texas, not the United States Supreme Court. Thus, if this amendment simply restored the State's authority to ban flag burning, I would enthusiastically support it.

However, I cannot support an amendment to give Congress new power to prohibit flag burning. I served my country to protect our freedoms and to protect our Constitution. I believe very sincerely that today we are undermining to some degree that freedom that we have had all these many years.

Mr. Speaker, we have some misfits who on occasion burn the flag. We all despise this behavior, but the offensive conduct of a few does not justify making an exception to the First Amendment protections of political speech the majority finds offensive. According to the pro- flag amendment Citizens Flag Alliance, there has been only 16 documented cases of flag burning in the last two years, and the majority of those cases involved vandalism or some other activity that is already punishable by local law enforcement!

Let me emphasize how the First Amendment is written, ``Congress shall make no law.'' That was the spirit of our Nation at that time: ``Congress shall make no laws.''

Unfortunately, Congress has long since disregarded the original intent of the Founders and has written a lot of laws regulating private property and private conduct. But I would ask my colleagues to remember that every time we write a law to control private behavior, we imply that somebody has to arrive with a gun, because if you desecrate the flag, you have to punish that person. So how do you do that? You send an agent of the government, perhaps an employee of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Flags, to arrest him. This is in many ways patriotism with a gun--if your actions do not fit the official definition of a ``patriot,'' we will send somebody to arrest you.

Fortunately, Congress has modals of flag desecration laws. For example, Sadam Hussein made desecration of the Iraq flag a criminal offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

It is assumed that many in the military support this amendment, but in fact there are veterans who have been great heroes in war on both sides of this issue. I would like to quote a past national commander of the American Legion, Keith Kreul. He said:

Our Nation was not founded on devotion to symbolic idols,

but on principles, beliefs and ideals expressed in the

Constitution and its Bill of Rights. American veterans who

have protected our banner in battle have not done so to

protect a golden calf. Instead, they carried the banner

forward with reverence for what it represents, our beliefs

and freedom for all. Therein lies the beauty of our flag. A

patriot cannot be created by legislation.

Secretary of State, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and two-time winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Colin Powell has also expressed opposition to amending the constitution in this manner:

I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer

out a few miscreants. The flag will be flying proudly long

after they have slunk away.

Mr. Speaker, this amendment will not even reach the majority of cases of flag burning. When we see flag burning on television, it is usually not American citizens, but foreigners who have strong objections to what we do overseas, burning the flag. This is what I see on television and it is the conduct that most angers me.

One of the very first laws that Red China passed upon assuming control of Hong Kong was to make flag burning illegal. Since that time, they have prosecuted some individuals for flag burning. Our State Department keeps records of how often the Red Chinese persecute people for burning the Chinese flag, as it considers those prosecutions an example of how the Red Chinese violate human rights. Those violations are used against Red China in the argument that they should not have most-favored-nation status. There is just a bit of hypocrisy among those members who claim this amendment does not interfere with fundamental liberties, yet are critical of Red China for punishing those who burn the Chinese flag.

Mr. Speaker, this is ultimately an attack on private property. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression depend on property. We do not have freedom of expression of our religion in other people's churches; it is honored and respected because we respect the ownership of the property. The property conveys the right of free expression, as a newspaper would or a radio station. Once Congress limits property rights, for any cause, no matter how noble, it limits freedom.

Some claim that this is not an issue of private property rights because the flag belongs to the country. The flag belongs to everybody. But if you say that, you are a collectivist. That means you believe everybody owns everything. So why do American citizens have to spend money to obtain, and maintain, a flag if the flag is community owned? If your neighbor, or the Federal Government, owns a flag, even without this amendment you do not have the right to go and burn that flag. If you are causing civil disturbances, you are liable for your conduct under state and local laws. But this whole idea that there could be a collective ownership of the flag is erroneous.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I wish to point out that by using the word ``desecration,'' which is traditionally reserved for religious symbols, the authors of this amendment are placing the symbol of the state on the same plane as the symbol of the church. The practical effect of this is to either lower religious symbols to the level of the secular state, or raise the state symbol to the status of a holy icon. Perhaps this amendment harkens back to the time when the state was seen as interchangeable with the church. In any case, those who believe we have ``no king but Christ'' should be troubled by this amendment.

We must be interested in the spirit of our Constitution. We must be interested in the principles of liberty. I therefore urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. Instead, my colleagues should work to restore the rights of the individual states to ban flag burning, free from unconstitutional interference by the Supreme Court.