EDITORIAL – How easily we get distracted from vital issues

The skies aren’t black with the smoke of burning flags, but with the recent vote regarding a… The skies aren’t black with the smoke of burning flags, but with the recent vote regarding a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would ban flag burning, the right wing’s effort to prioritize patriotism is in full effect.

With a vote of 286 to 130 in the House of Representatives, the ban is the closest it has been to passing in a long time. And although we must look to the Senate to help save us from ourselves — since polls indicate that if it passes this amendment, enough states would ratify it for it to pass — Congress’ political makeup suggests that we will soon be looking to the sky for silver linings once the protest kicks in.

The prohibition of flag burning is very clearly a restriction of free speech; it is not likely that this amendment is going to warrant an investigation of residences or pilfering through one’s fireplace. In other words, this is all about eliminating the message that comes along with burning a flag, not the behavior. The reasoning of this law is rooted in what it means to burn, step on, trash, deface — you get the picture — a flag.

In a word, it’s about nationalism.

The demonstrations of yesteryear must be burning in the minds of conservatives. When the political anti-war sentiment reached its peak during the Vietnam War, flag burning became a meaningful method of protest. Considering the controversies and failures of the Bush administration, it would seem convenient for the right to want to remove a form of protest from the realm of political discourse.

Furthermore, one must truly ask: What is the significance of blithe patriotism, anyway? For one thing, it’s not what has made our nation great. Some of the countries that acted on the belief that patriotic sentiment takes precedence over liberty were also some of the greatest superpowers that have crashed and burned to the ground.

Interestingly enough, the people who glorify patriotism demonstrate a willingness to trample our liberties and come up with things like The USA PATRIOT Act. Shouldn’t our civil liberties be the very things that make us feel patriotic?

But the truth is — at least for now — we still have a right not to be patriotic, especially when we feel patriotism is being used as a decoy. Prioritizing patriotism serves the dual purpose of distracting the American public from real issues and keeping neo-conservatives in power. The right keeps the country polarized with so-called “moral” issues, such as the Terri Schaivo case, rulings on the 10 commandments and prayer in public schools.

All the while, media outlets latch on to these divisive issues — flag burning being one of them — and the AOL ticker, Google and every other search engine known to man are set ablaze with these issues, creating a smog so thick we can’t see the problems with our declining currency.

We don’t see that in a few decades, our freshwater supply could run short, money and jobs are leaving our country at a distressing rate, Osama Bin Laden is still at large, China just bought out one of our largest oil suppliers, and there will soon be a dearth of land — the only thing we can’t manufacture.

But then again, we’ve got cell phones that can play Tchiakovsky, Tivo that can turn back TV time, yesteryear’s stereo compacted into a portable mp3 player the size of a stick of gum. We’re so easily distracted — whether it be by consumer culture or by giving our attention to token divisive issues such as flag burning — we forget to look at the big picture, the issues that matter. That plays right into the hands of an administration that has failed us on so many important fronts and a political movement that seeks to suppress dissent.