(09-26-2017, 09:29 AM)MalabarJag Wrote:

(09-25-2017, 11:43 PM)Bullseye Wrote: MalabarJag
   So your defense of the anti-American actions of some of the players (they stood for "God Save the Queen") is that their anti-Americanism wasn't as bad as the slave masters of the Confederacy?
   Talk about damning with faint praise.

No, my defense of the players is that nothing they have done to this point is even remotely anti American.

The First Amendment of the Constitution reads thusly: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." (emphasis added).  The Founding Fathers felt the freedom of speech was important enough to make it the first right to codify in the Bill of Rights.  Citizens have the right to peaceably assemble and to air grievances.  Nothing the players have done in kneeling silently before a football game during the national anthem, or raising their fists during the same time exceeds the rights delineated above.  There has been no violence associated with those players pre game body positions.  The players have not destroyed any property in their silent protests.  The players have not burned any flags when conducting these protests.  It is doubtful any of the players who kneel or raise a fist prior to a football game have violated any tangentially related time, place or manner restrictions passed as local ordinances. If so, there have been no arrests based upon that.  Their actions have been wholly consistent with the constitution.  


My contrasting their actions with those of the Confederates is to highlight the staggering degree of hypocrisy on this subject from the right.  People who literally declared war on and conducted war against this country are revered as heroes by the right.  Meanwhile, those who silently protest in the effort to help form a more perfect union are reviled as traitors by the same right.

Again, it isn't about patriotism.

What the right has functionally expressed is that people of color have no right to voice dissent the right is bound to honor or respect.

What else explains the disparate treatment diametrically opposed to the degree and severity of dissent raised by the groups in question?

1. So you admit that the 100,000 word screed you wrote about the Confederacy was an off-topic strawman argument. I don't recall anyone here calling any Confederates heroes.

2. As far as anti-American, how can a person who shows more respect for the British anthem than the US anthem be considered anything other than anti-American? I wonder what other countries' anthems the protesting players would prefer? We'll see if any player sits for the Mexican anthem in a few weeks. Maybe Kaepernick would stand for the Cuban anthem.

3. You talk about freedom of speech. Doesn't Trump have that same right to freedom of speech? He was expressing his opinion, not giving an executive order. We may not agree with his opinion, but as an American he has the right to express it. He does not have the right to use government power to enforce his preferred outcome, and he has not done that.

1.  Perhaps I answered hastily.  My citation of the Confederacy addressed two overlapping arguments, not two mutually exclusive arguments.  Nevertheless, there was no straw man, either in intent or in effect.  No, nobody in this thread stated explicitly the confederates were "heroes."  But we can easily conclude as much based on the totality of the circumstances.  You could attend a Jaguars football game wearing a Jaguars shirt.  Couldn't the reasonable person reasonably surmise that you were a Jaguars fan, even if your gear did not say the magic words "I, Malabarjag, am a Jaguars fan?"  Similarly, if you see a guy driving a truck with the confederate flag displayed on it, and he gets out of the truck wearing a shirt and or cap and or belt buckle with confederate emblems on them, does any of his gear have to explicitly state he loves the confederacy in order to surmise he has a favorable view of the Confederacy and that imagery? How often do communities erect statues, monuments, and name school and streets after people they revile?  Should we expect to see statutes honoring Osama Bin Laden  or the Pharma Bro?  Is it reasonable to expect to see a Timothy McVeigh Boulevard in Oklahoma City any time soon?    Why not?  On  the other hand, if a municipality allocates the requisite funds to erect statues and monuments to particular individuals, it suffices to say a significant portion of that community finds the individuals or entities so memorialized admirable.   It's not a stretch to conclude that when people in that community defend the various memorials from criticism or removal, they are doing so in part out of admiration for those persons or entities so memorialized.  It's not a particularly subtle or difficult argument to discern.

2.  Did you ever stop to consider they remained standing for the British national anthem because they were a guest in that country and that Britain was not the immediate cause of their grievance/protest?  Why protest a country if you have no grievance against them?  Not kneeling during the British national anthem is NOT anti American.

3.  Yes, Donald Trump has the constitutional guaranteed freedom of speech as an American citizen that all US citizens enjoy.  I have no problem with that.  The problem I have is that Trump exercises his rights in the most injudicious ways imaginable, wholly devoid of tact and civility and categorically averse to fact and truth.  The negative effect of his unfortunate habits are exacerbated when he engages in these unfortunate diatribes-first as a public figure, and currently as president of the United States.  He used his platform to undermine the credibility of his immediate presidential predecessor by spreading baseless claims about President Obama being born elsewhere, only to ultimately acknowledge that yes, President Obama was born in the United States.  He is currently using his platform to antagonize an unstable leader of a nuclear country, putting us closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cold War ended, and almost as much as the Cuban Missile crisis.  He is currently using his platform to antagonize a small number of players who were exercising their first amendment right to silently protest police brutality-NOT the military, the flag, or the national anthem.  What was once a dying controversy has now been brought into the forefront and renewed by his senseless prattle.

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