Kap not standing during anthem...also

Here's the thing. So many have wanted #blm protestor to do so peacefully. I'm not sure how much more peaceful it gets.

It is the racists disrespecting the anthem, our flag, and what they stand for. Land of the Free might ring a little hollow for anyone harassed by the police, or who has to deal with the receiving end of racism, or anyone who has been treated less than equal in the eyes of this nation. This country made some terrible mistakes when it has come to defining equality. It was white men, making those mistakes.

As a white male who grew up on a farm in Idaho... I will never be "offended" by a man or a woman who is fighting to get the same level of freedom this country has given me since birth.

Let me explain why this is not effective. First, the vast, vast, vast, vast (did I mention vast yet?) majority of coverage is in what he is doing not the cause he is doing it for. He could be supporting the right of penguins to rule Tanzania for all the media cares. Secondly, instead of actually adding to the conversation he's polarized it. It's really unlikely, IMO, that someone who was on the fence about the status of black people in America went "Gee, Kap decided to protest using the nation anthem, I guess I'd better get out there and do something." You could argue that other NFL players have joined in, so I guess it's non-zero but let's just all be realistic for a moment and agree that NFL players are an elite little club that neither you or I will ever join. It's certainly unlikely that someone who initially disagreed has suddenly taken a different stance. I'm going to go a bit cynical here, so bear with me, but it seems like someone who has millions and millions of dollars at his disposal and access to people with other millions and millions of dollars could enact more effectual action.

Finally, and I say this from a point of quasi-historical ignorance because I wasn't around then (but I'm well aware of what went on), I'm not sure that having players suddenly pulling out Black Panthers symbolism is really a good thing. The Black Panthers were not the solution. If people want to walk down some romanticized historical lane (note: people who wear Che t-shirts), I guess that is also their right. But at some point people's "rights" may eventually translate into action that in unstoppable and unwarranted. And I hope that before that point is reached calmer, wiser heads can prevail.

I think KAP has more attention from folks than people that were shot by LEO's and unarmed, there's something horribly wrong about that coupled with the fact that in most cases the only people that pay any price for these incidents are tax payers with civil judgements.   Not that long ago LAPD was wigged out about ex-cop Dorner and his killing spree that they opened fire on two separate pickup trucks (wrong color and wrong make mind you on one of them) and wounded people in the process.  Those officers were not FIRED!  unbelievable. 

If you compare how many people are shot by law enforcement in other western countries to the US it shows we have a serious problem that save for "body cameras" is seemingly not being addressed as DA's don't like to prosecute and juries rarely convict. 

The tears streaming down the face thing is exactly why I stopped going to church. I was a senior in high school, and this girl in the pew in front of me was crying during a hymn and looking towards heaven as we sang about "are you there God, can you hear me?" or something along those lines. I was like "wow, if this is affecting her that much and I'm not feeling it, maybe this isn't the place for me."

I hope I never get to that point with my country.

The National Anthem, as the story goes, was a song popular with military bands grabbed by the US Olympic Team at the first modern Olympics because each team needed a "national" song, and the US had nothing. Then baseball teams started using it before the start of games, and President Wilson made it the official song to be used for appropriate military times - but the competition between baseball teams to use it, and a Ripley's Believe it or Not cartoon announcing that the US had no national anthem helped spur the passing of a law making it official (something that had been tried for several years).

Despite what has been posted on-line in places, there is no law that says that any specific behavior is mandated during the playing of the National Anthem, and while I might chose to behave in what has become the traditional way to honor our country when it is played, I am not going to hold anyone else to that standard. The fact that others "honor" it by recognizing its meaning as freedom to peacefully protest - I mean most people consider the men from the 1968 Olympics as meaningful in a positive way now (tho it took a long time) - is for me another representation of our strengths, not our weaknesses.

If Key was to do what he did today, he would be a criminal.  However, he did not live in our time.  At that time, people were almost literally slaves of the king or queen of their countries (or at least they felt like they were).  So, to say that the United States was the land of the free was wildly accurate.  I mean England actively (or at least very passively) sought to exterminate the Irish in the Great Potato Famine in the 1840s and 1850s and killed, enslaved, and deported the Irish in the decades and centuries before.

As for Francis Scott Key, he owned slaves but released seven of his slaves in his lifetime (that may have been all of his slaves, but I cannot figure that out definitively).  He also worked pro bono to release several slaves from their masters.  He worked to free the more than 400 slaves of John Randolph of Roanoke and to provide them with land to support themselves for over a decade.  One newspaper editorial indicated that Key was so anti-slavery that he was referred to derisively as the "Ni--er Lawyer."  Perfect?  Certainly not, but he was more anti-slavery than several of his countrymen at the time.

One need only remember that Ulysses S. Grant, the champion of the North was a slave-owner until 1859.  The "free" states of New Hampshire and New Jersey still had slaves until passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865.  The whole issue of slavery is a very complex one.  I do not think that you should try and paint people in broad strokes as "good" or "bad" based on the issue without looking at the all of the facts first.