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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (6278)	12/7/2005 12:59:50 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542149

NYT Editorial: Senator Clinton, in Pander Mode Published: December 7, 2005 Hillary Clinton is co-sponsoring a bill to criminalize the burning of the American flag. Her supporters would characterize this as an attempt to find a middle way between those who believe that flag-burning is constitutionally protected free speech and those who want to ban it, even if it takes a constitutional amendment. Unfortunately, it looks to us more like a simple attempt to have it both ways. Senator Clinton says she opposes a constitutional amendment to outlaw flag-burning. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that flag-burning was protected by the First Amendment. But her bill, which is sponsored by Senator Robert Bennett, Republican of Utah, is clearly intended to put the issue back before the current, more conservative, Supreme Court in hopes of getting a turnaround. It's hard to see this as anything but pandering - there certainly isn't any urgent need to resolve the issue. Flag-burning hasn't been in fashion since college students used slide rules in math class and went to pay phones at the student union to call their friends. Even then, it was a rarity that certainly never put the nation's security in peril. The bill attempts to equate flag-burning with cross-burning, which the Supreme Court, in a sensible and carefully considered 2003 decision, said could be prosecuted under certain circumstances as a violation of civil rights law. It's a ridiculous comparison. Burning a cross is a unique act because of its inextricable connection to the Ku Klux Klan and to anti-black violence and intimidation. A black American who wakes up to see a cross burning on the front lawn has every right to feel personally, and physically, threatened. Flag-burning has no such history. It has, in fact, no history of being directed against any target but the government. Mrs. Clinton says her current position grew out of conversations with veterans groups in New York, and there's no question that many veterans - and, indeed, most Americans - feel deeply offended by the sight of protesters burning the flag. (These days, that sight mainly comes from videos of the Vietnam War era; the senator's staff did not have any immediate examples of actual New York flag-burnings in the recent past.) But the whole point of the First Amendment is to protect expressions of political opinion that a majority of Americans find disturbing or unacceptable. As a lawyer, the senator presumably already knows that.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (6278)	12/7/2005 5:53:09 AM
From: Chas.	Respond to of 542149

I'm not so sure the people have a choice, on a National level... the political voting "Machine" is still a formidable weapon... IOW...the party will decide who you will vote for not the people. the party is money, power, organization...

To: Dale Baker who wrote (6278)	12/8/2005 12:34:48 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 542149

The people have a tremendous influence on the government, collectively they decide who will be in government, but they aren't the government. If the user's of SI bought out the current owners and voted someone to administer the service the users would not be the administrator, even though they would determine the administrator. Perhaps more importantly in a real sense you don't have "the people", you have close to 300 million different people. Some of whom are not allowed to vote. You get a vote and I get a vote but we are separate individuals, we are not a collective organism, or even a committee or organized body. Even if the people where directly the government and every individual voted on every issue than "the people" would be the government, but you wouldn't be the government and neither would I. It would still be a separate thing from either of us. For an example of the idea, expressed in a different context - The US is a member of the UN, the US has a lot of power in the UN, but the US is not the UN and the UN is not the US. Even all the member states collectively are not the UN as such, the UN is a body that they participate in and influence. And yes there is also the question about how responsive and accountable the government is, but this is a peripheral to my point at best. No matter how responsive and accountable the government was it would still not be the same as you or me. Tim