Last night, I was listening to the late-night guy on Air America when he took at call from a lady who began by saying “I still have the ID card the Nazis gave me” when they over-ran Austria. The caller was very concerned that she saw distinct parallels between what happened to her homeland as a child, and what was happening in America today. She did not elaborate in detail, but a good history book can fill in the blanks.
Under skillful questioning by Mr. Malloy, she described having to present her card at every checkpoint she passed in the city. These checkpoints were fortified with machine-gun turrets. Finally, she was asked to describe the cards. She said they had her name, picture, address, thumbprint, the name of her school, and physical description, including distinguishing marks. This sounds to me like it’s a Social Security Number short of the Real ID requirements. If you haven’t written your Congresscritters and State officials, do that now, mmkay?
Of course, your Representatives in the House have been too busy to repeal Real ID. Fixing Social Security? Finding money for unfunded Federal mandates? Getting the Federal Budget ready for fiscal year 2006? Figuring out how to get Iraq stable enough that we can bring our soldiers home? No, nothing like that. They’ve been working on a Constitutional Amendment that would allow Congress to prohibit “Flag Desecration.”
Now then, unless my grasp of symbolism is totally astray, in which case the wine falling off the wagons at the beginning of “A Tale of Two Cities” is nothing more than wine and “A Separate Peace” was actually a good book, the Flag is a symbol. Once we start venerating symbols, we veer into a realm of idolatry. The reasoning is that by “Desecrating” a flag you are harming the country. Countless times I have heard veterans speak of how they fought for their flag. Personally, I’d like to think they fought for their country, represented by the flag, rather than killing other human beings over a bit of fabric.
Now think about this for a minute. Which would you rather a group of protesters did, burn a flag, or burn a courthouse? Those are two different things, right?
Dictators have known for decades that once you regulate what one can say and do regarding a symbol, you can regulate what one can say and do regarding what that symbol represents. The whole thing seems silly, until people start getting punished.
As if this stuff wasn’t scary enough all by itself, the Supreme Court has now ruled that municipalities can now seize any land they chose to allow “economic development.” The case in question concerns a middle-class residential community on the river. Such land is just too valuable to let mere single-family homes stand. Although I imagine this case would never have gotten to the Supreme Court if multi-million dollar homes were involved. This case should scare the pants off residents of mobile homes in metropolitan areas. For that matter, anyone who owns property now stands to lose it at the whim of some city council that receives sufficient bribes — excuse me, I meant to say incentives — from some developer.
Yet when I read this, it sounded strangely familiar. Ah yes, here it is. In Zimbabwe, the government has ordered poor areas of town bulldozed for economic development. Of course the United States has officially proclaimed that “bad.” I guess American companies aren’t making any money off the deal.