Standing Up Against Injustice, by Respectfully Kneeling

THERE ARE EIGHT MILLION Jehovah's witnesses in America who do not salute the flag by placing their hand over their heart during the national anthem, on religious grounds. One salutes God, but not some flag, no matter what it represents, if it does not represent God. there are two hundred thousand Amish in America who do not stand for the Star spangled Banner, for basically the same reason. Your loyalty is to god, and you stand when god commands it, sit when God commands it, but you do not stand like some secular sycophant in praise of something which has no fundamental connection to god, which if fact represents a worldly political and military power, not the Lord. Quakers do not recite the pledge of allegiance. their allegiance is to the Word of God, the Bible, not to any secular power of this corrupt world, including the United States. These are all examples of people who are deadly serious about their religions, and although none of them inhabit the mainstream of either American society or the Christian religion, in general, we the American respect them for the sincerity and depth of their devotion to what they truly believe in. we not harangue them or call their patriotism into question because of their refusal to put any of their temporal loyalties anywhere near the level which they reserve for God. Most American are wither unaware of their lack of showy patriotism, are not concerned about it, or respect it, because most Americans respect the Christian faith and the right of all Americans to practice it as they see fit. All these options are acceptable. this is what we should do; live and let live, leave well enough alone. And yet, let one African-American man kneel on a football field to protest a societal ill, and he loses his job. let a few dozen of his athletic peers do likewise, and the nation, in particular the conservative, ostentatiously patriotic part of it, throws a temper tantrum, suggest that the men should be fired, that the football games should be boycotted, that the football players should lose their job. What an incredible display of shallow hypocrisy by millions of sanctimonious people, who thought they would furiously deny any racism in their motives, are clearly showing just that; racism. To fail to stand for our national anthem is perfectly acceptable, but only on religious grounds. To do so for the purpose of pointing put a social and national injustice which has prevailed for centuries and prevails to this day, to knell in order to point out something truly important and wrong with our society; well, that's just not acceptable. Better to sweep racism under the rug, to pretend that it never happened, or has been long since done away with, than to confront the reality of its pervasive presence in contemporary American life. Typical right wing nonsense. hypocrisy, ND EVIL. The NFL players are not disrespecting the nation anthem or protesting it. they are reminding us of our urgent need to finally address a great evil which has lived among us, and still lives among us, by every study ever done. Racism, and the obvious fact that it remains among us, is our great national evils, and what would our right wing sanctimonious segment have us do? Ignore it. If someone must point it out, at least have the decency to do so in private, where no body has to be forced to see the protest. W shouldn't be surprised. Racism has been, and still is, a force found almost entirely among the Christian right wing of America. At any point in America's history, including now, the Christian community has had the power to eliminate racism entirely, such is their influence. Instead, what do they do? They ignore it, or complain when someone has the courage to speak out against it. Black NFL players love America as much as anyone. they love the flag and they love our silly sounding national anthem. What they don't love is four hundred years of grave injustice, a national American formally sanctioned injustice, and what better way to speak out against it than when we are giving thought to our nation, and what it represents, or what it should represent?