What I Am Thinking

As many of you who know me already are aware, I am a flag-waving, liberal-radical patriot who loves this country and what we have stood for over these 240+ years. I take off my hat and stand for the National Anthem and Stars and Stripes Forever sends chills up my spine. I follow the sentiment of the one-time Watertown, WI, Republican and Civil War veteran, Carl Schurz in

“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”

(Yes, this is about to be a post on the NFL protests and tempest in a teapot.)

My first reaction can be stated simply, but not without a little length:

• No one protests or threatens to turn off the NFL when it is about
• Domestic abusers and batterers getting a simple slap on the wrist;
• An NFL superstar bumping and pushing an officer with his car in the Twin Cities;
• A history of concussions and intentional "illegal" hits and tackles;

This doesn't even take into account the exorbitant ticket costs and millionaire players being paid by billionaire owners. That is simply American business practices.

But the past week or so the whole issue of players protesting

• systematic racism

has exploded into a huge controversy threatening

• boycotts, 
• lower ticket sales, 
• attacks on the right of free speech, 
• threats of getting fired in NASCAR, and 
• the President of the United States turning it into a firestorm by calling the protestors "sons of bitches" when he couldn't say anything about Nazi organizers but that they had some "good people."

One would think that the very foundation of our nation is being attacked.

And it is, but not by the protestors.

Suddenly it is claimed the protests are disgraceful behavior, disrespecting veterans, contempt for the flag, and an insult to the National Anthem. As if waving the confederate battle flag isn't disrespecting my great-uncle who died at the Battle of the Wilderness as a Union (United States) soldier. Oops..no, that's heritage.

Meanwhile the results of three hurricanes are causing suffering and illness to millions in three different parts of the USA and our people.

Meanwhile most of us white Americans have great difficulty seeing how our privilege, based on our color, doesn't allow for the growth opportunities for many who are not.

Meanwhile we are closing our borders and our minds to the freedom of religion, calling hateful actions by Nazis "free speech", and Colin Kaepernick's and the NFL's peaceful protests anti-American.

• How have we managed to go so far downhill away from our values and promises? 
• How have we managed to allow ourselves to be sold a bill of goods that being American is to be white and European only? 
• How have we permitted attacks on racism to become attacks on the country?
• How have many who call themselves Christian been lulled into thinking that hatred and prejudice and discrimination are answers to that question, "What would Jesus do?"

 I keep waiting to wake up and find it is all a nightmare or some dystopian vision of an American that could be, but isn't. I keep praying that it is not too late.

I stand for the Anthem. But as I do so I am standing for what the Anthem and the flag are all about: Freedom!

Why I Stand

Personally, I always stand for the National Anthem. It is in honor of men and women, like my Dad. He served to stop a white supremacist ideology. He served, though he was almost too old to go overseas in 1944 (age 39). He served as a non-combatant medic to use his training for the greater good.

He served to help protect our freedom to kneel during the National Anthem without fear of reprisal.

He served because our freedoms were- and are- essential to our nation!

Fine People- With No One to Blame?

Just when you think it has gotten as bad as it can, it goes on.
Mr. Trump called (at least some of) the white supremacists, "fine people." They are (?):

• Fine people who have a bad attitude? 
• Fine people who want to get rid of the Jews?
• Fine people who are ready to beat up anyone who isn't white- and even some who are.
• Fine people who wave a flag that by its very nature represents hatred and absolutely nothing that is part of the American tradition.
• Fine people who aren't to blame when patriotic Americans want to stop their hatred and violence.

When we move into a relativistic morality where everyone is correct and has a right to their opinion, even when it's hateful, we have stepped over into a moral dilemma of epic proportions. It is what can undermine who we are as a nation.

In a free-speech decision, the Supreme Court prior to World War I (Schenck v. United States) made some interesting and still in force decisions. One is the classic- free speech does not give you the right to cry fire in a crowded theater. It said, in its unanimous decision, that freedom of speech does not protect dangerous speech. Freedom of speech protection afforded in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment could be restricted, they said, if the words spoken or printed represented to society a “clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils which Congress has a right to prevent.” (-Link)

In my opinion, the Nazi/White Supremacist speech is, almost by definition, dangerous speech. By what it wants to do, it presents a clear and present danger to a civil American society and threatens those who they want to rid our society of with danger.

Yet those who protest them are as bad as they are? They are as much to blame? If the anti-Nazi protestor hadn't been there, she wouldn't have been killed by one of the Nazi sympathizers. If the anti-Nazi protestors hadn't shown up, there wouldn't have been a problem and no one would have gotten hurt. Of course that's somewhat true, but if the crime victim hadn't been walking down the street they wouldn't have been robbed.

Were there "fine people" on the white supremacist side in the demonstration? I would assume there were. Fine people can have horrendous opinions. That does not give their opinions more credence. It simply calls their decision-making skills into question.

If we have any doubts left about who Mr. Trump is aiming to please, David Duke, former leader of the KKK, took them away. As did Mr. Trump.

I pray I am not simply being a over-reacting alarmist, but we are facing the most clear and present danger to our American democracy that we have seen in a long time, maybe even since the 1860s. May saner heads and ideas prevail.