Last week I wrote a very brief piece on how I felt about kneeling during the national anthem titled “Why I stand for the National Anthem, and why I will never ask anyone else to stand.” After watching and listening to the hatred and vitriol, witnessing the lack of fundamental understanding of our First Amendment rights, and then being asked about my viewpoint as a veteran, I thought I would expand upon what I wrote earlier.
I am but one veteran. I do not speak for the 21.8 million other veterans out there, and no matter how loud your brother-in-law screams about him being a veteran, he does not speak for me or any other veteran. While my brothers and sisters in arms who lean right seem to think all vets think their way, we do not. We are a mirror of America. Some of us lean left, some lean right, some are in the middle, and some just don’t care.
My late father was a World War II veteran who served in the Navy. I am an Army veteran who served during the Cold War. My dad and I used to butt heads over flag burning. He would argue that it was disrespectful to the men who died under that flag. I would argue that it was protected speech, and allowed under the First Amendment. We never did agree on this, and the entire family would roll their eyes when this conversation would come up over holiday dinners.
As a nation, we have had this conversation before. The Supreme Court’s majority decision in 1943’s West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette is fairly clear about the issue. A case brought forth due to West Virginia requiring all students to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance, this decision was made in the middle of World War II, when patriotic fervor was at its peak.
To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.
In 1969 Sidney Street, an African-American World War II veteran, burned a folded 48-star American flag to protest the shooting of civil rights activist James Meredith in Mississippi.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2fIqOHa
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