The thought police blasting quarterback Drew Brees today should spike their own outrage. Brees is entitled to his thoughtful opinion, one shared by well over half of the public, against athletes taking a knee during the national anthem.
The social media mobs had a meltdown today when Brees, the holder of the all-time NFL passing record, answered a question about the anti-anthem act of defiance by former quarterback Colin Kaepernick. The whole context of Brees’s answer was respectful, gracious, and dignified.
The immediate object of Kaepernick’s wrath had been police racism, which, of course, is the topic that has roiled the country since the killing of George Floyd on May 25. Asked what his “responsibility as a leader at a time like this for your teammates and the rest of the players in the league” was, Brees responded:
“I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country. Let me just tell you what I see, what I feel, when the national anthem is played and when I look at the flag of the United States. I envision my two grandfathers who fought for this country during World War II, one in the Army and one in the Marine Corps, both risking their lives to protect our country and to try to make our country and this world a better place. So every time I stand with my hand over my heart looking at that flag and singing the national anthem, that’s what I think about. And in many cases, it brings me to tears thinking about all that’s been sacrificed. Not just those in the military, but for that matter, those throughout the civil rights movements of the ’60s and all that has been endured by so many people up until this point. And is everything right with our country right now? No, it’s not. We still have a long way to go. But I think what you do by standing there and showing respect to the flag with your hand over your heart is it shows unity. It shows that we are all in this together, we can all do better, and that we are all part of the solution.”
Nowhere did he denounce the kneelers. He said he didn’t agree with them, explained why, hailed the civil rights movement, and urged unity. That’s not an affront; it’s an opinion framed in constructive terms, whether or not one agrees with it.
For the majority of people that long have expressed disagreement with the kneelers, the point has been not to object to Kaepernick’s cause, but to his chosen means of expressing it. That’s what Brees did here, but in positive terms of his own, not in condemnation of others.
It’s not as if Brees has been silent about the need to fight poverty and racism. His philanthropy, especially for communities of color, is legendary. For years, he has denounced “racism … [and] inequality for people of color, for minorities, for immigrants.” He has been outspoken against the killing of Floyd, participated enthusiastically in #BlackoutTuesday, and urged everyone to “model to young people what it is to love and respect all.”
This is wonderful stuff.
If it is now not even acceptable to believe that there are better ways to protest than during the national anthem, then the politically correct commissars, the authoritarians of opinion, are well on their way to trampling the “liberty of conscience” that is the foundation of our constitutional republic. They must not succeed.
