Kneelers

When I was a kid,  Sunday mornings were not a time to watch TV.  There were only two or three channels, all local,  and all of them showed someone preaching.  I thought back to that yesterday while looking in on NFL football.  People watching NFL games or ESPN were treated  first to the preening and  self-righteous posturing  of  players kneeling or otherwise showing their contempt for the country during the playing of the national anthem at the start of the games and then to a string of homilies from the people in  the networks  praising  their glory.  Both the players’  actions and the encomia to them were silly and trivial, but sometimes one can learn something from the silly and trivial.

The first thing worth noticing is the fairly gross display of ignorance about free speech and the First Amendment from   players,  owners of the teams, and some people in the media.  The first Amendment protects the right of free speech and expression from  actions of governments – the only organizations that can impose censorship.  It does not prevent an employer from requiring  standards of behavior from employees while they are on the job and representing the employer.  (Such requirement do not infringe on  the right of free speech. If a person does not like a particular boss’s stupid rules, he can go work somewhere else.)   Neither does it  grant immunity from criticism and ridicule.  Just as person A is free  to express his opinions, person B is free to express his evaluation of them and of person A for holding them. 

 No one in government has  threatened the kneelers with punishment or reprisals of any sort or stopped or attempted to stop them.  Trump (who should have kept his mouth shut or expressed his disapproval differently on this one) merely said they are wrong, and their bosses should fire them for behaving that way on the job. He did not send out armed federal agents to disrupt their protests. As far as we know, he has not sicced the IRS onto opponents  because of their views. (That was the Obama administration.)  He certainly has not tacitly supported violent mob “resistance”  to stifle dissent.  (That was the local Democratic authorities in various cities and campuses around the country. )  There simply is no known issue of the right of free speech or the First Amendment in this stuff.

Rather there is a matter of taste, propriety, and, of course, political bias.  It is quite reasonable for Americans who like their country and its principles to be offended by spoiled, pampered,  arrogant, self-righteous,  and often hugely ignorant  entertainers thumbing their noses at that country at events they are paying to watch or attend.  There is nothing wrong with such an offended  person telling the kneelers and their bosses something like “if you don’t like my country, I won’t like giving you my time or money”.   In some respects it would serve them right. 

The political bias from the media is obvious.  Imagine that instead of kneeling in support of opinions  favored by the Democratic Party and  leftists,  some players in 2016 had  knelt sporting Make America Great hats, and  after criticism from Obama, their teammates had joined them  in gestures of solidarity.   It is likely the sermons on that Sunday would have taken on a different tone.