[In 2016 Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem; the NFL has now banned such actions but will allow players to remain in the locker room during the Anthem.]

This is all about a very simple concept (though few people seem to get it): if the government is allowed to trample the civil rights of one of us they are taking the civil liberties from all of us.

Or stated in a different way, if the government or his employer or society is allowed to prevent the black quarterback from protesting, if they can block his ability to freely express himself, then they are also violating the constitutional rights of the white store owner and the Mexican truck driver and the Asian banker.

And combined, these unacceptable actions – these blunting of civil liberties – are an f’n middle finger to the American Revolution and a blatant insult to every person who ever made a sacrifice for freedom.

The loss our hard-earned liberties is what’s truly disgraceful to the American flag, not some athlete kneeling during the National Anthem.

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Our fellow citizens who chose to kneel during the Anthem did so to bring attention to an injustice. They were smart, they picked a time, a place and an action that would be the most conspicuous.

Since that first action, a lot has gone wrong.

So they raised a little awareness, now what?

Most of the populace they hoped would become “aware” has long since forgotten the point of the kneeling. The message got lost in the firestorm. They allowed the topic to become patriotism when the real subject was racism. If now they allow their story to become relegated to the locker room, then the entire ordeal becomes meaningless and their collective voices become silent.

They would now be best advised to gather a much larger group, to rally a mass of many more people than the handful of players who have stood up to date, and mobilize around some other tactic than the National Anthem at a football game. They cannot allow the issues to get clouded in a haze of flag-waving and name-calling; they cannot allow a dissenting opinion to be labeled unpatriotic.

Of course, the players can choose to double down on taking a knee while the Anthem plays. But to make that work, to have this tactic to become anything but tired and cliched and an incitement to the angry mob, every player on every team would need to kneel. If that happened across the league, say, on the first Sunday of NFL 2018, then the players could make the owners stop fuckin’ around and real racial progress could take place.

But that won’t happen – and this where we can learn a lesson about racism.

You see, racism doesn’t go away when the victims protest. It only goes away or starts to, when the historic racists stand with the victims – when white players kneel in unison with the black players … When the white players, the white people, stand up and say, “No, no when you trample his civil rights you trample mine.”

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Of course, this is all just a repeat of our sorry racist history. We have the nasty habit of labeling different opinions, different points of view, as unpatriotic.

In the 1930s, 40s and 50s we started labeling everything other than the white protestant conservative view as communist. If you advocated for the working man or the Jew or the black man or the Catholic, you were a commie.

The so-called communists were quick to point out that, “This was how Hitler started.” First, the dissenting opinion was censored, then the person expressing that opinion was exiled, then the guy with a slightly liberal view had his business taken, then they terrorized him and then Uncle Adolph said, fuck it, just exterminate them.

It’s called fascism, an authoritarian government that advocates extreme nationalism that evolves into racism. Some very smart people in our society think that this can happen again – here in America.

Memorial Day is us remembering, memorializing, the concept of the warrior standing up for the rights and thoughts and opinions and viewpoints of all the others.

They stood up because we are all Patriots, and if it is to always be that way, the white player should kneel with the black player.

Photo credit: mclcbooks on Best Running/ CC BY-NC-ND