Colin Kaepernick

NFL quarterback Colin Kapernick recently came under scrutiny for refusing to stand during the national anthem before a football game.  People have come out of the woodwork to lambast this man.  People burned his jerseys, executives say they won't sign him, other players attacked him, and there are rumors that he may never play in the NFL again if he gets cut by his current team.  Heck, even his own birth mother (who gave him up for adoption, by the way) turned against him.

All this because he refused to sign a song and salute a piece of cloth.  Not to be disrespectful, but at the end of the day, the national anthem is just a song.  It won't get offended if you don't sing it.  Likewise, the flag is just a piece of cloth that doesn't care if you salute it or not.  Also, it is his American right to not stand and sing.  It doesn't make him any less patrioitic than the guy who salutes the flag every morning after putting on his red, white, and blue underwear.

If you look hard, you can find videos of people burning the flag or even wiping their buttocks with it.  Somehow, these people are only exercising their rights, but not standing for the flag is a bridge too far.  Think about that.  We're saying that destroying the flag isn't as bad as doing nothing as all.  Maybe this writer doesn't understand, but that is some seriously twisted logic.  Flag burners don't get fired from their jobs, but one guy doesn't stand up for the national anthem and it's off with his head?  That is some serious bull stuff.

Looking even further into the matter, you'll find that the NFL doesn't require its players to stand for the national anthem.  Yep, you read right.  This player is being condemned despite not breaking any of his job's rules or any of his government's laws.  He was well within his right to stand or not.  If he didn't do anything wrong at any level, why is he being treated like the worst thing since Osama bin Laden?  This writer is doing the math and it doesn't add up.

This writer isn't saying that he doesn't have the right to protest or that other's don't have the right to protest against his protest.  This writer is simply wondering if this is something that should make him an outcast.  As stated before, others have done much worse to symbols of America.  If we can clamp down on this guy, surely we can clamp down on those other guys?  If we can ignore the other guys and pass it off as exercising their American rights, can't we give this guy that same leeway?

At the end of the day, he didn't blow up any skyscrappers or speak badly about America.  All he did was refuse to stand for a song and a flag.  He did the most American thing you can do and that's stand (or sit, in this case) for what he believed in.  Looking at it that way, can you really find anything un-American about what he did?

Until next time...