We're a nation of flagoloters. We love our flag. And well we should. It is, after all, "The emblem of the land I love; the Home of the Free and the Brave..." But sometimes I wonder...

I came across this article today: American Flags as Big as Fields, about the Humongous Flag Industry in America. Something about making a flag that gi-normous just seems silly. Like the Living Flag of Lake Woebegon, where every citizen of the community would stand in the middle of the street wearing a red, white or blue cap to make an American Flag, execpt for one person who would then climb to the top of the watertower so he could look at it. And then they'd rotate so that everyone could get a chance to see it.

Or Sheboygan's own example, the Acuity Flag, billed as the Largest Flagpole in the United States; which always made me wonder if it was a display of national pride or an attempt to get in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Still it doesn't do to mock the flag. We have a hard time differentiating between the symbol and the things it represents. Many years ago, I remember, there was a flap over some artist who placed an American Flag on the floor in such a way that visitors to the museum would have to step on it in order to read the exhibit card on the wall. I drew a cartoon of the exhibit in which a couple museum patrons were looking at the flag with the puzzled "is-it-art?" expression museum patrons usually wear. Among them is a politician, identified by American Flag draped over his shoulder like a toga, the American Flag deely-boppers on his head and the enormous "ELECT ME" button on his lapel. He points angrily at the flag and declaims, "HORRORS! A blatantly DISRESPECTFUL display of our COUNTRY'S SYMBOL!"

That's why I don't get worked up about Constitutional Amendments to ban flag burning. It's not that I approve of burning the flag; (I agree with the person who said if you want to make a symbolic statement don't burn the flag, wash it); it's that I find other misuses of the flag to be a greater desecration: using it as a cynical tool to appeal to my patriotism; using it as a show of civil piety to mask actions which are actually harmful to the state; using it to distract people from issues that are really important; by trivializing it.

Patriotism isn't the last refuge of the scoundrel. Very often it's the first. That's why Love of Country gets such a bad name.

Desecration means to make less holy. You don't desecrate the flag by throwing mud on it or spitting upon it; you just insult the people who respect and revere that flag. The true desecration comes when people trash the principles and the values that flag stands for.