Kneeling for the National Anthem (813 words)
Kneeling when the National Anthem plays means disparaging the extraordinary essence of this country. We enjoy glorious expressions of freedom and do not experience the social injustices demanding the offensive behavior endorsed by the NFL, ESPN, and Nike.
The Star-Spangled Banner provides the majestic musical symbol of the Constitution I swore to support and defend. My allegiance requires me to stand for the National Anthem and kneel to pray for the nation. These actions derive from the indefinitely binding oath I took as a Navy officer. Veterans understand grievances can be resolved within confines of reverence for the country.
I am aware that when armed forces members make the ultimate sacrifice, they are wrapped in the Star-Spangled Banner for a traditional remembrance of freedoms found throughout our unique Republic. When America’s fallen arrive at Dover Air Force Base from the Middle East, their caskets are covered with a Star-Spangled Banner. When they are buried the flag is removed, elegantly folded, and given to a spouse, child, sibling, or parent.
I am aware that since the founding of the colonies and for all time the Constitution defines Americans as individuals who find their identity in pre-existing, natural, intangible rights, and not in ethnic or racial heritage, and certainly not in the acquisition of things.
The country does not suffer a burden of social injustice prescribing kneeling for the National Anthem. Instead the country malingers under the burden of virulent mythologies producing urban black cultures erasing role models like Booker T. Washington and Fredrick Douglas. These men promoted cohesive families, education, entrepreneurship, and marketable skills as strongholds of competence for building individual character, and for enjoying and promoting personal freedom. If similar role models exist today, they have been effectively marginalized in these spiritually impoverished communities.
Previously success for all was defined in terms of marriage, families, careers, trade skills, etc. People stayed focused on freedom as they moved through and around the issues now termed insurmountable barriers to social justice. They moved past immediate frustrations seeking to entangle them and chose instead to hold fast the promise that all are created equal. Quang Nguyen who escaped from Vietnam and founded Caddis Branding Agency said,” You see, America is not just a place on the map, it isn't just a physical location. It is an ideal, a concept. And if you are an American, you must understand the concept, you must accept this concept, and most importantly, you have to fight and defend this concept. This is about Freedom and not free stuff. And that is why I am standing up here.”
However, in a new world view, success becomes defined around manipulating people into codependent relationships. A fashionable consensus defines success as one group adjusting their behavior to validate the emotional damage others have decided to inflict upon themselves for unending perceived slights. The instigators reside as fragments of a swarm and trade adulthood and dignity for prestige without accomplishments. The subservient parties receive effortless addictive compassion as the drug of choice. This novel moral superiority only requires fabricating disgust for themselves and for this country. Both parties then shelter within a joyous cacophony of mutually supportive orations validating the miseries of their own making. I see both parties as feckless and their presumed causes as squalid and frivolous.
This theater of dilutional relationships proves not only personally futile but provides the opportunity for politicians become patricians to accumulate a useful constituency. As this swarm of acolytes and petty bureaucrats shout that there ought to be a law, the political class stands ready to offer enchanting administrative laws and rules. Supposedly these initiatives enable equal security and outcomes for all. However, these actions inject patricians and their mandarins with ever greater powers to compel obedience from citizens. People then confront ever narrowing boundaries for exercising inherent needs for independence and mutually agreed voluntary cooperation.
I will always reject these political charades and remain impassioned when considering the founding of our country. The Constitutional Convention members in their spirited debates maintained a devotion to first principles and avoided the avarice and duplicity expected of a political class. In just 114 days they produced a document forwarded to the Continental Congress and states for ratification. Here was a perfection of human wisdom seldom achieved; a miraculous achievement celebrated when standing for the National Anthem.
I will always choose success through the hazards and uncertainties of personal freedom over Faustian like bargains exchanging the essence of the human spirit for illusions of government benevolence. This country needs “a new birth of freedom” if we are to keep faith with the Constitution as the embodiment of the American ideal. Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the blood stream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same”.
Partial Bibliography:
The Life and Times of Fredrick Douglass by Fredrick Douglass
Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
The Liberal Mind by Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D.
ESPN president wants less politics at network: ‘It is not our jobs’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/espn-president-wants-less-politics-at-network-it-is-not-our-jobs-to-cover-politics/2018/08/17/6d54c706-a252-11e8-8e87-c869fe70a721_story.html?utm_term=.dfaa5f77d48a
Colin Kaepernick’s Nike Campaign Keeps N.F.L. Anthem Kneeling in Spotlight https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/sports/kaepernick-nike.html
Meaning of the Folding of the American flag https://www.truthorfiction.com/foldsoftheflag/
Conservative Black American Role Models Are Being Erased from History https://therevolutionaryact.com/best-black-american-role-models-erased/
Quang Nguyen Director/Founder Caddis Branding Agency http://caddisad.com/ Vietnam Veterans Appreciation Speech http://www.armsmart.com/includes/emails/Quang_Nguyen.html
The Case Against Liberal Compassion https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-case-against-liberal-compassion/
The History and Danger of Administrative Law https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/history-danger-administrative-law/
Constitution Society: John Locke CHAP. V Of Property. http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr05.htm
Property by James Madison http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/property-by-james-madison-march-29-1792.html
Outstanding essay. I, for one, appreciate it.
It is a sad commentary on our society that important things like your essay and the post should be considered trivialities, while other items like what Nancy Pulaski said be given wide ranging news. It’s heartbreaking.