A Stitch in Haste

Rank protectionism draped -- in a flag -- as faux patriotism:

A move is on in state legislatures to ensure that the flags folks will be flying and buying this Independence Day were made on this fruited plain.

Minnesota has passed the strongest measure, a new law that goes into effect at year's end requiring every Old Glory sold in state stores to be domestically produced. Violations are a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and 90 days in jail.

In Arizona, schools and public colleges were required starting July 1 to outfit every classroom from junior high up with a made-in-the-USA flag. Tennessee requires all U.S. flags bought via state contract to be made here, and similar bills are moving forward in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Restrictions on economic liberty -- "Made in The U.S.A"!

It's quite simple really: If a governmental body wants -- foolishly -- to limit its own purchases (with taxpayer money) to domestically produced goods, then so be it. Such idiotic myopia is beyond the reach of the courts (even though such purchases clearly would not satisfy rational basis review -- if a lawsuit could somehow materialize).

But the idea that a private person, with her private wealth, cannot buy a flag, made by a private manufacturer and sold by a private retailer, to display on her private property -- all because some moral defective moron in a statehouse feels the activist urge to decide for everyone else how best to be "patriotic" -- merely shows, yet again, that "The American Way" is long dead, and that there is little to commemorate today.