Colin Kaepernick can kiss my ass.
Him and Nike and anybody else who believes that the American flag is racist.
Or that it is a symbol of oppression or xenophobia or sexism or homophobia or whatever else it is the progressives want to accuse people of today.
If it offends them so much, let them go where it doesn’t fly. If you hate America so much, then get the hell out.
It’s that simple. If you think America sucks, go someplace you like better.
And stop spitting on the flag that safeguards your freedoms and flies over the best nation on earth.
The story is simple and unbelievable. Colin Kaepernick, who is paid several million dollars a year to endorse Nike, heard that the company was going to release a shoe for IndependenceDay that had a small Betsy Ross flag embroidered on the back.
That bothered him.
So much, the “Wall Street Journal” reported, that he reached out to the company and told it that such shoes were offensive to him and many others. The flag of Betsy Ross – stripesas today, but with a circle of 13 stars in the blue union field – was from slavery times and was consequently racist.
And Nike pulled the shoes.
Over the American flag.
In America, in 2019, an Oregon-based company selling overpriced Chinese and Vietnamese shoes refuses to sell those shoes because they have an American flag on them. Because anever-quite-was quarterback-turned-activist says it is offensive.
The American flag.
Like the one on your grandfather’s coffin, and the one that flies over your children’s school. The one that flies on the moon and over the White House and above the rows on rowsof stones at Arlington.
That American flag.
And immediately it broke down along party and philosophical lines. Progressives rushed to the defense of Kaepernick and Nike. Conservatives rallied to the flag.
Not a single Democratic presidential candidate criticized either the former athlete or the company.
Progressive social-media skulkers were in full-combat mode, defending Kaepernick and attacking anyone who expressed a contrary note. It was a full-throated roar from the twitteringleft, denouncing the nation as racist from beginning to end.
And right before Independence Day, the most sacred day in the American calendar, the scab was picked and the fight was renewed. On the day that should unite is in our common freedomand heritage, we were right back where Kaepernick put us when he took a knee.
And Kaepernick was right back in the public spotlight, which might be the whole purpose of this.
We live in a day where, for about half of the American population, patriotism is a dirty word. The civic virtue of loving your country is twisted and turned into a vice by peoplewho lack the common grace to be grateful to the country that has given them everything they have.
Citizenship, a Democrat congresswoman said last week, is a concept of institutionalized racism, and now so, apparently, is the flag and the nation it represents. It is a civilwar fought on the evening news, and in corporate board rooms, and on Facebook. The Democratic Party went to war 150 years ago to tear down the American flag, and it seems to have done so again.
It is a fight not for the American soul, but for the American existence. And we either rise to the challenge, or we fall to our own destruction.
And we rise and fight by recognizing that the flag is what unites us, not what divides us. It is an argument of evil that the flag is bad, and it is the enemies of your familyand your country who would turn you away from your flag and your nation.
The American flag has been carried into battle by Republican and Democrats alike, and flown over the administrations and congresses of both parties. It honors and represents usall. It is a token of our brotherhood, our shared stake and citizenship in this God-blessed land. It is not a white flag, it is not a black flag. It is an American flag, and it represents all of us.
It is the tie that binds.
One nation, indivisible – that’s what the pledge says, and that’s what the flag means.
No matter what Colin Kaepernick says.