Bob Kerrey is Right

The reaction of New School president Bob Kerrey to the heckling of John McCain's commencement speech was confusing--he dissed his students for lacking bravery at the time, but later basically thanked them for not torching the place. But a constitutional amendment against burning the American flag is a ridiculous idea in a free republic and I'm happy to see his Op-Ed today:

If our First Amendment is altered to permit laws to be passed prohibiting flag desecration, would we like to see our police powers used to arrest an angry mother who burns a flag? Or a brother in arms whose disillusionment leads him to defile this symbol of the nation? I hope the answer is no. I hope we are strong enough to tolerate such rare and wrenching moments. I hope our desire for calm and quiet does not make it a crime for any to demonstrate in such a fashion. In truth, if I know anything about the spirit of our compatriots, some Americans might even choose to burn their flag in protest of such a law.

Me included. Look, limits on specific kinds of speech threaten all speech. No matter how offended you are when an American flag burns--and as Kerrey points out, this is actually rare--there's somebody else who's equally offended by the things you want to say and how you want to say it. People who support these kinds of laws lack imagination, believing for some unknown reason that their own beliefs will always be secure and popular.

If you're a conservative who opposes campus speech codes, there's no bigger campus and no larger code.

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