We have a lively disagreement in our household about permitting or prohibiting flag burning. My husband believes an Constitutional Amendment against the burning or defacing of the American flag should be part of our Constitution. I disagree.

July Fourth is a good time to talk about such things. There is a patriotic fervor in the air as heavy as the smell of fireworks bursting on the horizon that makes these discussions pertinent and lively. As families sit in their back yards, or on their fire escapes, at the beach or in their boats, at block parties or on park benches, the open air lends itself to higher-pitched voices, and the fare of hot dogs and hamburgers is as liberal as the ideas.

Like my husband, proponents of the Amendment point out that the flag represents all that we stand for as a country. It symbolizes the sacrifices made by so many Americans who put their values and beliefs ahead of their own safety and survival to ensure those values live on.

The American flag, its red white and blue and its brilliant stars, should not be used to symbolize anything but those values, believe supporters of the Amendment. To deface it is to deface America, Americans and the Great Experiment that has proven successful for two centuries.

Flag burning takes the memory of those who gave their lives for this country and sends them up in smoke, they say. More important, it says that today’s generation of Americans, who have reaped the benefits of those who paid the ultimate price, and stand by now and allow the defacing of the flag to take place, unabated, are ungrateful and apathetic.

Reaching over the table for the mustard and sauerkraut, I say no way. It is precisely because the American flag means so much to us, and because it stands for what we believe, that we cannot allow it to come under the protection of an Amendment that is as out of place in our beloved Constitution as glazed duck at a backyard picnic.

Are we now to begin to permit free speech only to the point that it does not offend? Is freedom a moving target to be adjusted to the level of sensitivity or political correctness of the age? Is there not some inconsistency in our American conscious if we were permit free speech in the form of symbolic gestures only when the symbols are meaningless?

Flag burning means something, and it is because it means something that it must be accepted.

We’re not so different, my husband and me. We both a get a lump in our throats when they play the National Anthem at the ball game, and anger wells up inside of us as at the thought of someone trashing our country; we fly the flag in front of our home and honor those who have served our country, a country that is a lot like potato salad, made with sugar and vinegar but easily soured when left out and unattended.