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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA very resonant FB post,
https://www.facebook.com/michael.sand.129/posts/10209994259472453Ive 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 Im concerned with injustice, and will use my position to try and address it.
Want to know whats 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 McCains 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 arent among them.
p..s. anyone wishing to share this, please feel free.
democrank
(11,112 posts)Thank you, G_j.
ALL of this.
MLAA
(17,335 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,721 posts)Veteran here, with 3 brothers who served in various capacities, 2 of them in Vietnam.
Agree fully. If I didn't serve to defend someone's right to peacefully protest injustice, why did I serve? I don't like the answers that many on the right give.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,045 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(49,045 posts)If their speech is not free, then your speech is not free either.
For me to be free, you must be free and they (everyone else) must be free too.
Otherwise all liberties are imperiled.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
maryellen99
(3,789 posts)The same ones who are yelling that the football players should be fired were the ones who said Paula Deen shouldnt have been fired from Food Network.
Beartracks
(12,821 posts)sarge43
(28,945 posts)my husband, his father and brother, members of my family from great great grandpa to great nephew. You are using all of us and everyone who has served and is serving to cover your fear and hatred of black Americans who are fed up with being treated as though they don't matter.
The "taking of a knee" was not an insult to any of us or our flag or our national anthem. It was petitioning the government for a redress of grievances. A right guaranteed by the Constitution. We all take an oath to that Constitution and we know what it means.
Here's what we find insulting: Demeaning a Gold Star mother, a former POW, victims of combat PTSD, a CinC acting like war is a school yard pissing contest.
So knock off your butt hurt and stop using us.
G_j
(40,372 posts)Last edited Tue Sep 26, 2017, 05:48 PM - Edit history (1)
and it is just like Trump to cynically use the military to push his own unpatriotic narrative.
sarge43
(28,945 posts)dae
(3,396 posts)He has the right to speak and he fought for others to have that right.
His words are powerful.
raven mad
(4,940 posts)Shared.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)BadgerMom
(2,771 posts)imanamerican63
(13,817 posts)I am Vet, not wartime. I absolutely agree with you.
Wounded Bear
(58,721 posts)Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,771 posts)it will not phase RWers. Hopefully some who are on the fence, but RWers are not open to reason. They have their bigoted, emotional opinions, and they are not hearing any argument against what they believe no matter how sensible truth-filled. Which is, I think, may be our unstoppable downfall.
A whole segment of the population, far larger than any in the past, simply does not wish to think past their ingrained prejudices and has their own set of chosen lies they call "facts."
So well stated. Thanks for posting. I have already shared. It needs to keep moving.