Protecting the symbol, not the principle, of freedom.

I would never burn an American flag. Ever. I would never dress up in sheets and shout racial epithets at a fellow human being, either. However, as repugnant as those two behaviors might be to most, they are only subjectively so and are no less valid a form of self-expression than a sonnet, a painting or a vapid pop song. In other words: They are protected forms of speech under the First Amendment.

The U.S. House has passed a potential amendment to the Constitution that would allow Congress to ban desecration of the flag of the United States (June 23 article, "House takes step to ban flag-burning"). The amendment seems to have a real chance to pass the Senate as well. If that happens, all that would stand in its way is passage in 38 of the 50 state legislatures. Given the moral fervor that has gripped the country since Sept. 11, 2001, it doesn't seem so far-fetched that the amendment could make it over that not-insubstantial hurdle.

Why do so many fail to see the importance of distinguishing the symbol from the principle?

Let's say the amendment passes. Desecration of the flag becomes illegal. What happens if I burn a flag with 100 stars instead of 50? I'm not burning the actual U.S. flag, just something that looks a lot like it. Or what if my flag has 50 stars and 13 stripes, but is orange, pink and brown instead of red, white and blue? Could I be jailed and fined for burning that? If so, then it's not the flag itself that's being protected, but an avenue of dissent toward one's government that's being blockaded.

And that's about as un-American as you can get.

The Commercial Appeal, June 26, 2005

Every day that fate allows you.

In my new role as Daddy, I find myself wholly inadequate in the face of this horror visiting itself upon my daughter’s lifetime. She will now grow up in a world forever changed, and sadly will never know the difference. For her, the World Trade Center in New York will be from this point on a subject spoken of in the past tense, by elders who will ask one another in somber voices where they were when they first heard, when they saw the first terrifying images.

Her birthday party is this coming Saturday. She'll be one year old. We’re not sure if one of her godmothers will be able to make it here from Boston, given the current lockdown of the nation’s airports. Nonetheless, the party will go on as planned.

At times like these, it’s important that we fight back in the ways we can against those people who would have us live in fear, suspicious of our neighbors and reluctant to walk our own streets. It is important that we celebrate all that is rich within our lives, and that we give solemn thanks that we are not among those poor souls who are right now suffering the unimaginable.

We must not give into the hysteria to which they would have us succumb. If we allow ourselves to fear and accuse, forgetting our reason and our fundamental dependence upon one another, then that is by far the worst damage an enemy such as this could possibly inflict.

We must also resist the tendency to aggrandize these people of hatred by calling them monsters and devils. They are only men, flesh and bone just as are we, and men can readily be battled.

And sometimes watching a child, besmeared with ice cream, gleefully tear into a birthday present is the best way to do just that.

The Commercial Appeal, September 12, 2001

You're right. That would just insult the monkeys.

I congratulate Rhea County Commissioner J.C. Fugate and all other like-minded folks who've decided to take a stance on Crimes Against Nature. I think we as a race would be better off renouncing all affronts to the natural order, not just homosexuals.

We should all adopt broader "Scopes", if you will.

For starters, flight. If Mother Nature had intended man to fly, she'd have given us wings. So, I hereby propose legislation that bars Tennessee residents from purchasing airline tickets. After that, plastics. If we need to build something, anything, then the all-natural alternatives of wood and mud bricks should suffice.

Once those barriers between us and nature are gone, we can really get down to brass tacks (although, brass is an alloy, and therefore unnatural — oops) by eliminating all remaining modern technologies convoluting our existence today: medicine, communications, agriculture.

I've no doubt shedding these burdens and returning to the simpler, purer ways of our ancestors will prove the salvation of our species. Roots, raw meat, and wild berries for food, pelts for warmth, pointy sticks for protection. Count me in!

The Commercial Appeal, March 2004

And thus affects eternity.

Embarrassing as it may be, I think if anyone who attended Brunswick Junior High School during the 1981-1982 term were asked, they could probably recollect the weird kid who chained himself to the music teacher's piano on the last day of school to protest her leaving to go teach at Mt. Ararat. I was that kid, and Barbara Franklin had been not only that rare teacher whose lessons, guidance and caring could invoke from a sixth grader such a ridiculous act of devotion, but also one of those few whose influence becomes so great that they are remembered for a lifetime with gratitude and affection.

I’ve long since moved away from Brunswick, Maine, though I visit relatives from time to time and loosely follow local events. I’ve read many of the statements made by Ms. Franklin regarding her position on the fingerprinting of teachers, and have to say that I find myself in complete agreement with her stance. I also have to say that it saddens me greatly, as I know it does many others, to see her public teaching career forced to a premature end in order for her to sustain her principles. I understand it, and I fully support her, but in my opinion it represents many other such significant losses to be endured by the implementation of unsound, reactionary, and fear-based policies such as the legislation against which Ms. Franklin has steadfastly spoken.

At first I had been stricken by the irony of the apparent parallels between my stance twenty years ago and Ms. Franklin’s today. Back then, she had implored me to abandon my cause in that it would change nothing and only serve to harm myself. I can imagine no one in good conscience asking the same of her, even if the end result is the same.

That, however, is where the parallel ends. My actions as a rambunctious eleven-year-old bore no real consequence for myself other than a novel bit of notoriety, whereas Ms. Franklin’s personal sacrifice in this matter carries very real weight, very real depth of meaning, and hopefully will yield equally substantial results.

A true teacher must always be willing to educate by example, even if at a personal cost. Though it’s an unexpected lesson in grace and determination that’s being offered, Barbara Franklin is unquestionably that teacher.

And I am honored to be her student still.

The Times Record, May 2002

I pledge allegiance. And hope you can, too.

While I personally have no issue with the phrase "under God" within The Pledge of Allegiance — I grew up with it that way, after all — and despite the fact that the Pledge did not originally include the phrase, I think the real question at hand regarding the recent decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is whether or not the Pledge is impartial and fully accessible in its modern form to every single citizen of this country.

A pledge is an oath, and an oath cannot be taken half-heartedly or with any reservation whatsoever, else it is meaningless and not an oath at all. There are many people in this country who practice perfectly legitimate religious beliefs that do not provide for a single God. Some believe in many gods, some believe in a Goddess, and some even believe in no god. People with religious beliefs outside the Judeo-Christian "norm" are no less American, no less patriotic, and no less deserving of the right to promise their allegiance to their country by reciting the Pledge, alongside their fellow citizens, fully and with every fiber of their being.

The Pledge as it reads now creates what I think to be an unintentional division between those who can sing it out with no hesitation, and those who genuinely feel that they compromise their religious beliefs — or lack thereof — by doing so. As an official document of the United States, the Pledge should be applicable to every American. Like the Constitution itself, which makes no mention of God and is far more vital to our national identity, the Pledge should be absent of any bias, of any partiality, and as neutral in verbage as it can be made — much the way it was written in 1892.

The removal of the phrase "under God" is, in my opinion, not a denial of anyone's right to incorporate Him into their proclamations of love for this country, but rather an acknowledgement that there are others for whom doing so is truly discomforting and even injurious. It would simply be putting the needs and interests of others before our own, which is not only the American thing to do, but also what I think God would expect of us in the first place.

The Commercial Appeal, May 2003