I understand that there are American athletes, cheerleaders, members of bands in professional, college and even high school sports who believe — mistakenly — that America is so racist that they cannot, in good conscience, stand when the national anthem is played.
I also understand why the NFL and some college and professional teams allow this to take place. Cowardice is far more common than courage.
What is much more difficult to understand is why the majority of fans in the stadiums and watching on television continue to attend and to watch these sporting events. Why would people who love America, venerate the flag, and wish to honor those who have fought and died for that flag, continue to patronize any team that allows its players or others affiliated with the team to dishonor that flag and country?
There is only one possible answer: Such people value their seat at the stadium or watching the game at home more than they value honoring the country.
No one disputes the legal right of any player not to stand during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In America, you have the legal right to stomp on and burn the American flag. At the same time, however, any team or league has the right to set rules of conduct during a game. For example, no player is allowed to place the name of a candidate or to write a political message on his hat, helmet, or uniform.
Leagues and teams should make it clear that one of their employees’ obligations is to stand during the national anthem. But with few exceptions, when their players don’t, the leagues and the teams do nothing. And, saddest of all, few fans do anything. After all, how many fans are going to waste their expensive season tickets by leaving, or by not showing up at, a game?
Yet, just imagine how powerful it would be if half, or even a quarter, of the stadium emptied out after players refused to stand for the national anthem. Or imagine if a significant percentage of TV viewers simply stopped watching this mockery of every American soldier, sailor and Marine who fought for, let alone died for, that flag. That would constitute a great moral and patriotic message — and quickly end this behavior.
Until then, however, the message being sent is that there is no price to be paid for public disdain toward the American flag and anthem. And when there is no price paid, the message sent is that what these players, cheerleaders and band members are doing is entirely acceptable.
More than acceptable — made famous. Time magazine, for example, featured the leader of the contempt-for-the-flag movement, San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick, on its cover.
America, like Europe, is a society that is committing suicide. Those who have only contempt for the greatest country ever created dominate our news and entertainment media and teach this contempt to America’s young people at virtually every college in the country. This past month, every UCLA freshman was required to read a hate-America screed, “Between the World and Me,” by the radical Black nationalist writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.
This is how Coates is described by Joel Kotkin, a Presidential Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a lifelong Democrat (until this year, when he registered as an independent):
“To Coates, America itself seems irredeemable, its very essence tied to racial oppression and brutality. America is [about] . . . a legacy of ‘pillaging,’ the ‘destruction of families,’ ‘the rape of mothers,’ and countless other outrages. Today’s abusive police — and clearly some can be so described — are not outliers who should be punished but ‘are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy.’ His alienation from America is so great that he admits to little sympathy for the victims of 9/11.” (Italics added.)
That’s the one book every UCLA freshman has to read this year — and the reading is followed by workshops on American racism, where students hear from UCLA professors such as Safiya Noble, professor in the graduate school of education, who tells them, “We must all think about who we are in the face of persistent anti-Blackness.”
Colin Kaepernick and others won’t stand for the flag that represents the least racist country in recorded history — the country to which far more Black Africans have immigrated voluntarily than ever arrived on a slave ship.
If you watch a game in person or on TV in which any player or other on-field participant refuses to stand during the national anthem, you have told everyone in your life, especially your kids, one of two things: either that you agree with not honoring America because it is such a bad country, or that football is more important than America.
Dennis Prager’s nationally syndicated radio talk show is heard in Los Angeles on KRLA (AM 870) 9 a.m. to noon. His latest project is the internet-based Prager University (prageru.com).
