With Memorial Day just behind us, let's think about the flag, Old Glory. Boy, does it get people upset. Either those defending it, or those outraging those defending it by doing things those who defend it will find outrageous -- like burning it. It stands for many good things; for the military, it's the symbol of what many men and women fought and died for. I think it inexcusable when people desecrate Old Glory. Does that mean it should be a crime to do so? No. And not because doing so is “self-expression.” Rather, because making it a crime to do X, Y, or Z to the flag won't produce the effect those clamoring for the law want and intend it to have.

In fact, frustrating though this fact may be, identifying the result you want and punishing people for diverging from it rarely works. Instead you have to make them want to achieve this result too. Examples from my home institution, the US Naval Academy, make this clear. I think all of us can agree that we'd like future officers in the Navy and Marine Corps to be upstanding, moral, God-fearing patriots. That's the easy part. The hard part is getting those results.

One school of thought is presumably the one to which those who want a Constitutional amendment against (say) flag burning belong. Want people who won't lie? Threaten to throw them out if they say they did 13 pull-ups when they only did 12, or that they were in their rooms one night when they weren't. Want midshipmen and cadets who do well academically? Have their grades reported periodically and get the company academic officer on their case if they fail to produce. By extension: want people who respect the things the flag stands for? Make it a crime to deface the flag. There's your result: nobody defacing the flag.

What you don't get is, necessarily, any real understanding of why these actions are wrong, or -- the most important thing -- any desire on their part to comply with the rules. Pavlov's dogs learned to modify their behavior based on electric shocks and food. People can be trained the same way. But the result with people is that they become unable to function in any circumstances that aren't precisely the ones they're used to getting rewarded or punished for. Plus it makes them resent the men in the white coats. All they care about is avoiding punishment and getting the food -- they're not asking anymore. Why is this a good or a bad thing?

Let me make clear that I don't buy the arguments of those who point out, though quite correctly, that Old Glory is only a piece of cloth, probably costing $4.95 at Home Depot (less at Wal-Mart) and probably, nowadays, made in China. All that's true, but that doesn't mean you should indulge in disrespectful behavior. For that matter, everything in life is “only” something in the sense that the flag is “only” a piece of cloth: the Koran “only” a book, the Christian cross “only” a piece of wood, and so on. And yet people die for these “onlies” -- what else should they die for? That's all we have, being human beings and living on Earth as we do.

We should respect -- no, revere -- Old Glory. My question is whether we achieve that goal by prohibiting actions? Those who believe we can achieve that desirable effect by punishments just haven't taken on board human nature. Thus I'm of another school of thought than the one outlined above. Unfortunately, it implies actions more time-consuming than the first school of thought, which says: identify undesirable behavior and punish people for doing it. I wish things were that easy.

The best way to raise a child is almost certainly not to make all the right decisions for him or her, though that would get desirable actions l00% of the time. When they grow to be teen-agers -- or well before -- you have to explain to them what the big picture is, why they should want to do the right thing. They have to be part of the process, or they're acting as mechanically as Pavlov's dogs.

It's far easier to mandate externals than it is to influence people inside, where it really matters. I've written about this before (“Respect and the Donatist Heresy”). But in the long run, the only way to get the respect for Old Glory that I'm pretty sure everybody reading this column wants is not to target the behavior, but instead the desire to indulge in it.

So the other school of thought, the only one with any chance of effect in the long run, says: you talk, you explain, you make your case, and then you hope for the best. You may not get through initially. And you won't get through l00 percent of the time. But to the extent that you get through, you've touched the person doing the actions, not just the actions. That's what's behind the laborious, time-consuming process of real education, which is what I do for a living. You can't tell them how to think, or what conclusion to come to. All you can do is show them what the perils of all pathways are, and let them make their own decision.

Because you know what? They're going to anyway. So you stop them doing the actually destructive things (killing each other or themselves) and then you educate them. Not forbid them. Educate them. Sure it's a pain, and it would be easier if we could just control other people the way we do machines. But we can't. That's just the way we're made. Acknowledging this doesn't mean we're permissive, lax, or lily-livered. It means we're realistic about the kind of creature we humans are.

Would you like to express your opinion on this issue? Let your public officials know how you feel!