mr. speaker , i am a little ashamed to confess my mother is around the age of the gentleman from north carolina ( mr. watt ) xz4004240 . 
my mother used to tell me stories when she was a young woman in the segregated south that she would drive through parts of rural and western alabama and that she would see crosses burned . 
my grandmother used to tell me stories that after brown v. board of education , she remembers riding through parts of rural alabama and seeing crosses burned . 
the interesting thing about that is the burning of those crosses did not keep a single black child out of a public school . 
the burning of those crosses , frankly , did nothing to slow down the march of justice in this country over the 40-or-so years i have been around . 
i think that is relevant to this debate today . 
mr. speaker , 15 years ago the u.s. supreme court would not let congress ban flag-burning . 
and here we stand 15 years later in a country that is still deeply patriotic , a country that is still full of love of americans toward each other . 
frankly , i would submit in this last 4 or 5 years we have seen a rising tide of patriotism . 
we feel a greater faith in each other and a greater faith in our fighting forces now than we ever have . 
i wish advocates of this amendment understood we have won this battle . 
those of us who believe in this country , those of us who believe in its decency , and those of us who believe in its power , we have won . 
within our borders , we have won . 
the people who would burn flags , just like the people who would burn crosses , have lost . 
and not only have they lost ; they have been thrashed . 
they have been banished to the margins . 
they are not a legitimate part of our political debate . 
they are not acceptable viewpoints to most of us . 
i wish we understood that every time we think about saying that one kind of speech is so obnoxious or so offensive that we ought to get rid of it , every time we even let ourselves think that , we would be so much better off if we trust in our better angels , because the best angels in our nature tell us that flag burners are wrong . 
they tell us that the instinct behind them is wrong and we have prevailed . 
there is a reason we have had this 230-year constitutional tradition . 
it is because we have been strong enough and powerful enough and our values have been deep enough to withstand even the worst of ideas . 
i thank the gentleman for offering this amendment and for calling us back to an understanding that even this august institution is limited by the united states supreme court , and that even the best values that we pronounce in this chamber are limited by our constitution . 
