This year's July 4th observance comes shortly after the House of Representatives approved a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to ban flag burning, and shortly before the Senate is expected to take up the issue.

While the amendment has failed on four previous occasions, there is a good chance that this time it will garner to two-thirds majority necessary for it to pass the Senate and be sent to the states for ratification.

There is no question that desecrating the flag enflames the passions of patriotic Americans. But at the same time, the best argument I ever read against the flag-burning amendment was made by an American whose patriotism was unimpeachable, and who knew, better than anyone else, why such an amendment would be a mistake.

His name was James H. Warner. He was a Marine flyer during the Vietnam War, who spent five and a half hellish years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. During that time he was starved, tortured, kept in solitary confinement for 13 consecutive months, and wracked with diseases and internal parasites brought on by his mistreatment.

In an all-out effort to break his will, one of his interrogators showed him a photograph of anti-war demonstrators in the U.S. burning the American flag. "There!" the North Vietnamese officer gloated. "People in your country protest against your cause. That proves that you are wrong."

"No," Warner replied. "That proves that I am right. In my country we are not afraid of freedom, even if it means that people disagree with us."

I'll let Mr. Warner tell what happened next: "The officer was on his feet in an instant, his face purple with rage. He smashed his fist onto the table and told me to shut up. While he was ranting, I was surprised to see pain, compounded by fear, in his eyes. I have never forgotten that look, nor have I forgotten the satisfaction I felt at using his tool, the picture of the burning flag, against him."

James Warner told this story in an op/ed he wrote for the Washington Post in July of 1989, after the Supreme Court ruled that flag burning was protected as free speech under the Bill of Rights. It was that decision that launched the campaign for a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution.

Mr. Warner's argument against the amendment is as compelling now as the day he wrote it: "We don't need the Constitution in order to punish those who burn our flag. They burn the flag because they hate America and they are afraid of freedom. What better way to hurt them than with the subversive idea of freedom? … Don't be afraid of freedom, it is the best weapon we have."

Amen to that.