With the unveiling by the NFL of new national anthem guidelines, a lot of bad arguments have resurfaced. But oddly enough, hardly anybody seems to remember a basic fact—Colin Kaepernick started it.
Let’s go back to the start of the anthem protests. Colin Kaepernick, a mediocre quarterback started kneeling during the playing of the national anthem. He was very clear as to why he was doing it:
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” said Kaepernick in an August 2016 interview. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
The first thing to notice is that Colin’s worldview is both wrong and abhorrent. When he sees the United States, all he sees is murder and race-based oppression. What he believes, and promotes, is nothing short of a blood libel on the American people.
Mr. Kaepernick understood what he was doing. He was well aware that his act would be hurtful to the people watching. The time and form of protest was designed to be as provocative as possible. Doing the protest during an innocuous patriotic ritual and disrespecting the symbols of the nation are not common acts of protest. The purpose is to offend, not to convince.
The protests attack our sense of the sacred. These are the modern equivalent of burning the flag. That’s the problem the NFL has been struggling to contain. Good luck with that. They are going to need it.
