Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
Recently, proposed amendments to the Constitution were often known by their initials, such as the BBA (balanced-budget amendment) or the ERA (equal-rights amendment). So maybe the proposed amendment to ban flag-burning should be called the PGA–the Political Grandstanding Amendment.
No other proposed amendment in our history has served so little real purpose, except for use as a campaign issue, whereby supporters of the amendment can label opponents as “unpatriotic,” regardless of their reasons for opposing it.
Even the ill-advised Prohibition amendment was at least an effort to confront a serious social problem– alcoholism. By contrast, the flag amendment targets the actions of maybe 5 or 10 people a year (if that many).
