Daily Inspiration Quote by William J. Brennan

Brennan’s line performs a neat constitutional judo move: it takes an object saturated with reverence and insists that reverence can’t be enforced without betraying itself. The verb choice matters. “Consecrate” borrows from religion, acknowledging the flag’s quasi-sacred status in American civic life, then immediately refuses the logic of blasphemy laws. If the flag is holy, Brennan implies, the First Amendment is the higher divinity.

The subtext is aimed at a familiar political temptation: turning patriotism into a loyalty test. Punishing desecration looks like respect, but Brennan frames it as insecurity masquerading as principle. The flag, as “cherished emblem,” stands for freedom; criminalizing expressive offense swaps that freedom for compulsory piety. The word “dilute” is the quiet dagger. It suggests the harm isn’t abstract or symbolic; it’s chemical. Add coercion to liberty and you don’t strengthen it, you water it down.

Context sharpens the intent. Brennan’s view comes from the late-1980s flag-burning battles (Texas v. Johnson, United States v. Eichman), when outrage over protest collided with the Court’s insistence that political expression includes the ugly, the enraging, the profane. He’s not defending the act; he’s defending the architecture that lets a pluralistic country survive its own disagreements. The quote works because it refuses the easy moral binary: honoring the flag isn’t about shielding it from insult, but about tolerating insult as proof that the symbol still means what we claim it means.