Over the course of this year, the centenary of William F. Buckley’s birth, we will republish an article by him weekly. This week’s article weighs the merits of arguments made in favor of protecting flag-burning as a form of speech.
The proposed constitutional amendment designed to discourage the burning of the flag is being criticized on three grounds. One is that flag-burning is an aspect of free speech; a second, that as a practical matter flag-burning is so infrequent as to warrant ignoring it rather than writing a prohibition against it into the Constitution; a third, that no amendment to the Bill of Rights has thus far been written, so that to amend it now is on the order of editing Hamlet.
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