Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

7-2-89 . . . A few years ago I began an essay on tobacco advertising and censorship with these words: “Americans are and always have been a people of principle”. Can I take that back? Actually, it’s true of certain Americans, but hardly all. What I meant was that, from its inception, the United States as a nation has been committed to certain principles, such as freedom of speech, free­dom of religion, and due process. The people who drafted and ratified the Constitu­tion thought that there were certain matters that should be beyond compromise, however unpopular they may be at the time. These days, we seem to have forgotten basic princi­ples. For example, reaction to the flag-desecration case just decided by the United States Supreme Court has been of two sorts. There are those who celebrate it, on grounds that it protects freedom of speech; and there are those who criticize it, on grounds that it ignores the special value people attach to patri­otic or nationalistic symbols. Those who celebrate the decision are princi­pled; those who criticize it are not. The unprincipled people are concerned with outcomes; they do not want to see the flag burned, period, and will do whatever it takes to achieve that goal. Principled people, on the other hand, are willing to accept distasteful outcomes as the price one pays for neutral principles. (By “neutral” I mean “not based on content”.) The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that contemporary Americans are pragmatic rather than principled. That is, they want results, not high-minded talk about principles, pro­cesses, and neutrality. Only eggheads, they believe, care about the lat­ter.