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It's Not Disrespectful to Protest the National Anthem

Hemant Mehta (http://www.friendlyatheist.com,   / hemant   ,   / friendlyatheist  )


http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendly...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendly...

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If you were a high school history teacher trying to show students what the First Amendment is all about — what it allows you to do and what it doesn’t — especially in the wake of the National Anthem protests spurred by Colin Kaepernick, how would you do it?

Because if there's one thing we've learned in the wake of his protests, it's that people clearly don't understand the First Amendment. Or patriotism. It's not unpatriotic not to stand for the Anthem.

It's almost funny how his critics claim he should have to stand for the Anthem because people died for his rights... the rights he's exercising by not standing up for the National Anthem.

They don't seem to have any respect for the people who want our country to be better, so they're willing to draw attention to its flaws in the hopes that we can fix them. 

That, to me, is patriotic. Far more than people who think patriotism amounts to nothing more than obedience and ritual.

So in North Carolina, a high school teacher by the name of Lee Francis taught a lesson o the subject by invoking Texas v. Johnson, the 1989 Supreme Court case that overturned bans on desecrating the United States flag.

Before that ruling, you could theoretically get punished for burning the flag or ripping it up. It was considered, like, a sacred symbol.

And then, to show students what the Supreme Court now allows, the teacher desecrated a flag. Specifically, he stepped on it three times.

A couple of students who clearly didn’t understand the point of the lesson walked out of class after it was over, and complained to the principal. 

But they really missed the point here. If they didn't like what he did, that's fine. They can argue against it. Their discomfort isn't a reason to ban what he did.

As the ACLU said, the freedoms and principles that the flag represents include the freedom to step on it. 

The administration, unfortunately, didn't see it the same way. They initially put the teacher on paid administrative leave, then suspended him for 10 days without pay.

So how’s that for a lesson, kids? The First Amendment only protects popular speech! A teacher who makes you feel uncomfortable in class will be punished for it! 

What a horrible takeaway.

Now let me add a caveat here. The First Amendment doesn't let you get away with anything. You can't yell fire in a crowded theater. And teachers, especially, are limited in what they're allowed to do. They can't preach in the classroom, for example. 

But what this teacher did wasn't dangerous and it wasn't advocacy. He wasn't telling the students they should step on flags. 

He was merely demonstrating the fact that some people take symbols so seriously that they'll go after someone else who doesn't. 

Which is exactly what happened to him.

I remember a few years ago, there was a similar true story of a college professor who asked students to step on a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” on it. 

Most of them, he predicted, wouldn't do it. They would hesitate or refuse. That’s because the symbolic nature of the paper was so powerful.

We see this type of thinking everywhere. A lot of Christians would never want to rip a page out of the Bible... even if there are tons of copies around. They think they're doing something wrong.

You could give me 5 copies of a picture of my baby and I would feel kinda weird ripping one of them up. I feel weird deleting a blurry picture of my baby from my phone.

But that's the power of symbolism. And we have to get over it. There's a difference between a symbol and the idea it's meant to convey. Let's stand for the ideas, not the icons.

By the way, that college professor? He got punished for even trying that lesson. For doing his job and getting the students to think critically.

This is an issue atheists ought to care about because many of us fight against symbols all the time. 

We’re told to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and some of us remain seated when that happens because we don’t want to pledge to a nation “under God” or one that falsely states we have “justice for all.” 


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