Last edited by High_Plains_Drifter; 05-23-2018 at 07:02 PM.
Out of respect for those of you who served, and for whom I have the utmost respect, this will be my last words on the topic, and they will be the words of someone else...
"I’ve seen a lot of posts over the last 24 hours regarding “respecting the flag” and what that means…and how athletes who use their public forum to voice dissent are somehow “unpatriotic”. I want to offer a different opinion.
My father is buried at the foot of the flagpole in Golden Gate National Cemetery. He landed at Normandy, fought at the Battle of the Bulge and liberated Nazi camps in Germany. His enemy was fascism. I served as a Green Beret in the early 1970s (pretty sure you all know what that entails). Our enemy at the time was communism. My son is currently a serving officer in the Army, who on his dress blues wears the Bronze Star he was awarded during a year-long tour in Afghanistan. His enemy is and was the Taliban and the threat of terrorism.
Three generations of my family, serving the USA, in harms’ way. Three vastly different enemies, but enemies who shared one common trait. ALL of them stifle free speech. All of them bully, degrade and terrorize those who hold opposing views and who peacefully express them. All of them are intolerant and demand “loyalty” to the leader.
I can tell you, speaking for three generations of my family, it is PRECISELY for men like Kaepernick, and his right to peacefully protest injustice, that we were willing to serve. There is NOTHING more respectful of our country than living up to its ideals. There is nothing more patriotic than to say “I’m concerned with injustice, and will use my position to try and address it.”
Want to know what’s unpatriotic? Using your white privilege to avoid serving, citing “bone spurs in the heel” while playing varsity tennis at college while others went. Want to know what is antithetical to American values? Using the most powerful pulpit in the land to incite violence – against ANYONE. Want to define disgraceful behavior? Denigrating a man like Senator John McCain’s service and heroism while you sat home.
Want to respect the American flag? Then respect the ideals for which it stands. Bullying language and calling peaceful protesters “sons of bitches” who should be fired aren’t among them."
https://www.facebook.com/michael.san...09994259472453
"I am allergic to piety, it makes me break out in rash judgements." - Penn Jillette
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure." - Clarence Darrow
"The man who invented the telescope found out more about heaven than the closed eyes of prayer ever discovered." - Robert G. Ingersoll
My thoughts, FWIW:
Some people can only see things through their own cultural/gender/racial lens. Many if not most blacks see "black issues" over the flag and everything else for that matter. These days women are doing much the same with "womens' issues". What is good for your team, your employer or your country, takes a third-row back seat to your peoples' issues.
I agree that these players have a 1st Amendment right to protest. But what trumps that is that employers have the right to enforce employee conduct on company time. What is more "company time" to an NFL player than during a Sunday afternoon game? These players have the whole rest of the week to protest 'til the cows come home. Or better yet, they can just not play at all in the ultimate protest.
It truly aggravates me when people try to equate this with people actually being silenced in totalitarian regimes. Puh-leeze.
After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box - Author unknown
“Unfortunately, the truth is now whatever the media say it is”
-Abbey
Ecclesiastes 10:2 - A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but a foolish man's heart directs him to the left.
Wise men don't need advice, and fools won't take it - Ben Franklin
"It's not how you start, it's how you finish."
I take your point, HJ, but there is a difference between having a right to do something and doing it during your working hours. Having "the right" to kneel means they don't get arrested for doing it. Doing something objectionable during your working hours still leaves your employer the right to punish or fire you for doing it. It also leaves the customers (in this case NFL viewers) with the right to dislike the players, to resent the NFL, and to turn the channel.
Ecclesiastes 10:2 - A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but a foolish man's heart directs him to the left.
Wise men don't need advice, and fools won't take it - Ben Franklin
"It's not how you start, it's how you finish."
the people that don't want to stand have said many times WHY they don't want to.
But some people seem unable to see past their own personal views of what they think the flag should mean to everyone and how everyone should do and think exactly as they do concerning it.
So they don't seem to be able to even comprehend any other views on the subject of "the flag" and "the anthem".
So many have ASSUMED the worse motives of national hatred plus contempt of the military as among or -the REAL- reasons for their actions instead of their clearly stated motives.
So is your question "If you don't want to, then what are you doing here?" an honest one?
Can you understand that others have a different way of honoring the flag, anthem and country while trying to get the country to... more fully... live up to the ideals of the anthem and the flag?
But if doing it your way or leaving the country are the ONLY 2 options you can imagine , well,
then there's not really any way to explain it.
It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. James Madison
Live as free people, yet without employing your freedom as a pretext for wickedness; but live at all times as servants of God. 1 Peter 2:16
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Edumnd Burke
This is what I think about the author's comments above:
I did NOT serve for people like Kaepernick. My father was a Vietnam vet. I despise people like him to my very core. People like that don't deserve the Rights they have, and certainly not for anyone to sacrifice everything so some squealy shitbag can run around disrespecting them.
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Edumnd Burke
For me it's simply as this.
the Flag and athem represent the BEST ideals of any nation on earth.
and when those Ideals are NOT lived up to in various ways.
Then any individual or group has the right to peacefully protest. Including taking a knee at anthems . BTW Kappernick got the idea from a soldier on the team that told him it would be a respectful way to protest and yet still honor the flag and anthem. odd that.
If others don't believe theres a problem fine.
But the act itself .. as far as i can tell... is not an attempt to DISHONOR the country OR the Vets.
it's a way to point out a perceived injustice.
If it were postal workers, or Native Americans or Vets themselves doing it in protest I'd say the same.
I see it nearly the same as the right to pray.
If an employer tells me that I'm not allowed to quietly pray on the job at times when I'm not required to work. Sorry the employer has crossed the line, not the prayer.
You can't ethically REQUIRE certain forms of patriotism at your place of biz.
What if the Boss says everyone one must sing the anthem and salute the flag coming into work, at breaks, and at lunch, and on the way out the door? Because the boss loves the Country just that much. I'm sure many people would just do it... FOR THE MONEY. But seems to me it's a violation of personal freedoms the flag represents.
Freedom of worship and the lesser freedom to honor the flag and country as you please seem to me on upper and lower tracks.
And yes Country is under God in my book. Christians are my "group" if you want to put me in one.
And if the country isn't moving toward Godly standards then maybe it should be protested, heck many on the right were talking about "revolution" while Obama was in office and if Hillary was elected. Under what flag would the "new" gov't be under i wonder? the confederate??
Last edited by revelarts; 05-23-2018 at 09:03 PM.
It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. James Madison
Live as free people, yet without employing your freedom as a pretext for wickedness; but live at all times as servants of God. 1 Peter 2:16
well seems to me the freedom NOT to be forced into state worship or religious worship with jail or death is one of a BARE minimum of freedoms people should have.
we hold these truths etc etc..
But the complaint isn't really about freedoms, it's about more equal justice and less harsh/unjust law enforcement. Less innocent people harassed and killed by police.
But yeah, hoping for more freedom from a state that sometimes harasses and kills you for no good reason doesn't seem like a very outrageous "freedom" request to me Russ.
And frankly we don't even have the freedom that constitution and the bill of rights outline at this point. So frankly I wish people on all sides would complain about our freedoms more.
It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. James Madison
Live as free people, yet without employing your freedom as a pretext for wickedness; but live at all times as servants of God. 1 Peter 2:16
We, jointly...cannot forget. If they choose to take a knee for any reason. WE TOO have a choice...NOT TO SPEND OUR MONEY to help them pamper their Million Dollar Football Contracts by supporting their Ignorance.
If they really want to make a point. They should all go back to get educated, and learn how the Politicians they Worship have lied to them for so long...they endorse their ignorance through Hatred, Stupidity, and Racist tactics called Liberal Democrat Disinformation.
I love to make Liberals Cry, and Whine.
So, this is for them.
GOD BLESS AMERICA - IN GOD WE TRUST !
When the ideas are "not lived up to" try looking at home before blaming the Nation. Let's not forget what this is about. Blacks crying about the police. Blacks by percentage commit more crimes that whites. There are more blacks in prison. More blacks get hurt by police. More blacks commit crime. Did I mention that already? Therefore more blacks get arrested and they ALL want to fight and argue with the police. They pull guns, knives, run, fight and whatever. But that's okay, right?
How about DON'T BE A CRIMINAL? That's not the country's fault. It's not the police' fault. It's YOUR fault. Fix it your fucking self and get off my TV with your personal bullshit problems. I got my own. Blaming the country for you being a fuckup is a copout from personal responsibility. Fuck, write your Congressman.
When you abuse your rights to trample mine, then it's fuck you. Yours end where mine begin. Want to be in the NFL and act like you have anything in common with some ghetto thug driving your Alfa Romeo to your mansion after you work once a week and disrupt the entertainment I'm paying you for for your bogus ass bullshit? Expect me to stop the gravy train. I don't come sit on your lawn and bitch about your party wasting $200M and counting on a witch hunt do I? Oh. I'd get arrested.
Grow the fuck up.
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Edumnd Burke