Burn the Flag

It's a smoky, beer-soaked night at Davey's, sometime around 1994. Onstage are the Starkweathers, a Kansas City band named after a Nebraska serial killer. They pound out real country — electric, twangy and raw — unlike the hat acts from Nashville. Somewhere during the set they pass around one of those antique-looking gray- and-brown ceramic whiskey jugs, and everyone takes a swig.

The lead singer is Rich Smith, and before the night's over, he'll barrel into what will become the Starkweathers' signature song.

Burn the flag, he'll sing. Rip it up.

The tune is fast and catchy, the lyrics simple: Don't let 'em ram it down your throat if you don't want. Speak your mind. Stand right up. Yeah burn the flag. Burn it up.

The Starkweathers start the song with the chorus, and the verses that follow make it clear they're not mindless hooligans. Sure enough a lot of people died to keep this country free, Smith acknowledges, and he's proud of the "redneck blood" that runs through his own veins. But, he warns, he won't join no big parade when they wave that thing to cover up their shame.

Then it's back to the chorus. Burn the flag.

Smith takes his concerns global. Well, I ain't just a talkin' bout the ol' red, white and blue, he notes. It could be the Stars and Bars, Union Jack, Rising Sun — it's any flag they wave to keep you hypnotized.

By this time, the audience is singing along with Smith's infectiously subversive chorus. Burn the flag.

His final verse twists the Vietnam-era slur against anti-war protesters and challenges: If you don't love it, change it. It don't have to be this way.The actions any disgusted American could take? Well, there's a range of possibilities, and Smith's wink at the end softens his first, redneck reaction: Use guns or votes or maybe smile and sing ...

Burn the flag.

Like too many things of beauty, the Starkweathers didn't last long. The band split up for reasons that had nothing to do with music. The band's other singer and songwriter, Mike Ireland, went on to record a couple of critically lauded albums (1998's Learning How to Live was for Seattle's legendary Sub Pop label); this summer, he plays on second Saturdays down at Harry's Country Club. Smith dropped out of the music scene for a while. He works a day job in shipping and receiving at a music store in Lee's Summit, but he's been working on a new band called the Broadsides and says they're scheduled to play at Mike's Tavern in mid-July.

Smith probably won't sing "Burn the Flag" at gigs because it was such a Starkweathers song. But the track appears on a compilation CD put out last fall by Bloodshot Records, the alt-country label in Chicago. On For a Decade of Sin: 11 Years of Bloodshot Records, the Kansas City boys share disc space with the likes of Ralph Stanley, Hank III, the Old 97s and the Waco Brothers, along with local favorites Split Lip Rayfield and Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys. "Burn the Flag" is also for sale on iTunes.

I'm glad to discover all of this because I've been hearing the song in my head for more than a decade — every couple of years, when Congress saddles up its tired old flag-protecting horse. This year is supposedly a crucial one for passing a constitutional amendment because support for such a change might be waning — which makes the effort seem all the more pathetic, just like taking a few more whacks at gay marriage. The fact that some folks aren't falling for it anymore gives a person hope. But some of us are still gullible.

And that's what a lot of politicians are counting on.

Over the past couple of years, U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver has spent many of his trips home complaining about the big sham issues in Congress.

"The philosophy here in Washington is simple," Cleaver tells me. "When things look bad for your side, change the subject and you play on the emotions of a segment of the public. Flag burning, the federal marriage amendment, and if they can come up with something comparable to saving Christmas, which is what they did last year, or another Terri Schiavo ... these so-called wedge issues will put emotions above reason. As long as the public is inclined to do that, that's going to continue to be one of the strategies of this administration."

Like many of us, Cleaver believes that the more important issue is "the places we are burning as we wave the flag, like Baghdad." He goes on: "We have an $8.3 trillion debt, we are borrowing a million every second, paying $600,000 interest every second of the day. The third-highest expenditure in the U.S. budget is interest on the debt," Cleaver says. "So why in the world should we stop in the middle of all of those issues vital to the welfare of this nation to focus on something that's not a problem?"

As Cleaver points out, "We are not in the middle of a flag-burning frenzy." When an issue is completely unrelated to people's day-to-day lives, Cleaver says, "The chances are really high that it is a sham issue. When these things are done by the administration, it is declaring almost openly that the public is not wise and therefore we can trick them at will. Which ought to be an insult to every American."