Why, if I were an NFL player, my respect for the flag would now compel me to stay off the field until after the anthem
Now the owner of the Miami Dolphins, Stephen Ross, has done a 180 on the anthem issue and given a completely incomprehensible explanation for doing so. Previously a supporter of players who chose to exercise their First Amendment rights by adopting their posture of choice during the pre-game playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner," Ross has decided that it's time to restrict that right because President Trump has "changed the paradigm" of the discussion on the issue by "making it about patriotism," opining thus:
It's a different dialogue today, Whenever you’re dealing with the flag, you’re dealing with something different. [the President] has changed that whole paradigm of what protest is. I think it’s incumbent upon the players today, because of how the public is looking at it, to stand and salute the flag.
Baloney. Two different brands of baloney, in fact. First, when President Trump once again expressed his total lack of comprehension of the First Amendment by suggesting that players who declined to stand for the national anthem be fired, and large numbers of fans who similarly have little no comprehension of what the American flag stands for agreed with him, it changed nothing of any significance. The American flag is still all about the right of people to express their opinions freely- and, when all is said and done, even to not be patriotic! There is a certain sub-group of the political Far Right which has always had a problem understanding this, and that sub-group strongly overlaps with the group which sees things in same simplistic, authoritarian and somewhat Bill of Rights-unfriendly light in which Mr. Trump does. In fact, the latter group is mostly in the habit of pretty much automatically agreeing with anything he says, no matter how demonstrably untrue and even ridiculous.
I've never been completely clear on whether the problem Mr. Trump and his supporters have with the Bill of Rights has to do with ignorance of it or outright contempt for it, but whatever its nature, it's well-established. Mr. Trump promised during the campaign on several occasions to restrict freedom of the press in ways which neither the president nor even the Congress has the constitutional authority to restrict it. He is in the habit of threatening those who criticize or oppose him, and more than once openly denied that it's appropriate for people to express opinions which disagree with his own. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled on two separate occasions that even burning the flag is a constitutionally-protected act of free speech, Mr. Trump has expressed the opinion that those who do so should be jailed or even deprived of their citizenship.
It's worth quoting one of the justices who disagreed with Mr. Trump. The crazy, Commie liberal in question is the late great Justice Antonin Scalia:
If I were king, I would not allow people to go around burning the American flag. However, we have a First Amendment, which says that the right of free speech shall not be abridged -- and it is addressed in particular to speech critical of the government. That was the main kind of speech that tyrants would seek to suppress.
Neither the President of the United States nor public opinion has the power to change the fact that people have a constitutionally-protected right to freedom of speech. Justice William Brennan observed that, as poignant as the fact may be, the American flag stands precisely for the right of people not only to disrespect it but to actually burn it! Like Mr. Trump and Justice Scalia, my contempt for anybody who would do such a thing is boundless. But my very love for the flag and what it represents prevents me from wanting to legally restrict a right for which that very flag stands.
How others interpret their expression of a person's opinion is immaterial. That includes the President. That includes me. That includes the general public. That includes Jerry Jones and Stephen Ross. People have the right to express their opinion by peaceful protest, and the flag itself is, among other things, a symbol of that very right. However, that brings us to the second flavor of Trump/Ross baloney.
As might be gathered from what I said above, I happen to find the habit of kneeling or otherwise expressing what might be seen as disrespect for the flag as distasteful, to say the least. I do not approve of the practice precisely because no matter what evil things may have been done in the name of that flag, I revere what it represents. But there is, in fact, a way in which the position which first Mr. Trump and now Mr. Ross have taken has, in fact, changed the paradigm of the discussion, and it's in exactly the opposite way from how Mr. Ross thinks it has.
Before all this, "taking a knee" or otherwise failing to be present and to stand at attention during the anthem was about racism, or police misconduct, or some other way in which America has failed in the eyes of the protestor to live up to what the flag stands for (incidentally, as I've pointed out before, Colin Kaepernick started "taking the knee" because it seemed to him and friends of his, including a former Green Beret, to be more respectful to the flag than remaining seated or making some sort of hand gesture). But now, President Trump- and even more, Jerry Jones and Stephen Ross and Dolphin's coach Adam Gase- have made it entirely about free speech. While it's not my intention to play the Trumpist game and draw inferences about the patriotism of others from how they exercise that right, if I were an NFL player I, for one, would feel compelled to stay in the locker room or tunnel during the national anthem because I would feel that I would be showing disrespect for the flag and for what it represents by doing anything else.
I would stay off the field during the anthem as my form of protest in favor of the flag. It seems to me to be the only patriotic thing to do since Mr. Trump and the others have changed the paradigm by turning the meaning of the flag itself on its head.
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