Riddle me this:
What's worse than Jane Fonda?
Answer?
A whole team of Jane Fondas.
In 1919, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously, in Schenck v. United States, that "shouting 'Fire!' in a crowded theater" was not "protected speech" under the First Amendment.
This was followed, 23 years later, by another decision, in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, which ruled that "fighting words" were not protected speech under the First Amendment either.
(The Schenck decision was overturned by the high court in Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969 — but the Chaplinsky decision remains intact).
While no one is expecting anyone who disrespects the national anthem or the American flag to be actually sent to prison for doing so, it is nonetheless a viable rationale for large segments of the public to express harsh disapproval of such acts (as Jason Aldean did in Try That in a Small Town) — just like anti-gay activists claimed that the fact that laws banning "consensual sodomy" were still on the books in many states until the Supreme Court declared such laws unconstitutional in its ruling in the Lawrence v. Texas case in 2003 were an excuse for stigmatizing gays and lesbians, or even those stereotypically thought to be such (they were said to be "unapprehended felons").
In 2016, then-49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick led a movement that encouraged NFL players to desecrate the national anthem, ultimately costing him his career due to the massive backlash that caused both the league's attendance and TV ratings to tank, with whites over 65 and having annual incomes of more than $200,000 leading the way.
But at least Kaepernick was representing not only just one NFL team, but the one that happens to be located in the most leftist market that has an NFL team.
Which brings us to the United States women's soccer team — which has not only taken to blaspheming the national anthem, but also to wear t-shirts emblazoned with the logo of Black Lives Matter, a group that scores of millions of Americans find to be flat-out subversive — causing hosts of patriotic Americans to outrightly root against America's team (of course many NFL fans actually do that already — but that is a suitable topic for a different column!).
So, at least arguably, even though the soccer players simply refused to sing the anthem rather than kneeling during it as Kaepernick, et al did, their breach of patriotism is more egregious.
Founded in the wake of the death of George Floyd — who, to paraphrase Chief O'Hara of Batman fame, had a criminal record that was longer than both of Yao Ming's arms and both of his legs stacked end-to-end — BLM, which started out as a group advocating more than radical enough positions like defunding the police and releasing murderers, rapists and carjackers on their own recognizance pending trial, has since branched out into expressing open hostility toward such things as religion in general (and Christianity in particular) and free enterprise.
As BLM co-founder Patrice Cullors said: "We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories (like dialectical materialism?)." The group takes positions many Americans would find very controversial, like its view of the traditional family, saying: "We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and 'villages'."
In other words, Black Lives Matter is just plain anti-American. And it must be pointed out that conservatives were out of power for 20 years in a row — from 1932 until 1952 — yet not once did they ever besmirch our flag or our national anthem like a bunch of sore losers; indeed, immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Sen. Arthur Vandenberg (R-Michigan) famously declared that "Politics stops at the water's edge" — in stark contrast to the far left, which burned and spat on the American flag while defiantly waving the Viet Cong flag and chanting "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, NLF is gonna win" during the Vietnam War.
There are plenty of groups that Megan Rapinoe & Co. can gravitate toward — such as the NAACP, and even the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network.
But the communist BLM is a bridge too far.
The last thing we need is for our own athletes to be pouring gasoline on the five-alarm fire that goes by the phrase "culture war."
So this observer wholeheartedly joins those who hope that these seditionists end up sniffing a bicycle seat in the tournament, as was said in an episode of Hill Street Blues.
Leave a Comment