Free Speech

                We’ve all been inundated the last few days with the free speech issues connected to the latest flap over the protests in the NFL.  As the Ken Burns series on Viet Nam, which happens to be running alongside this latest Trump clown show proves, the outlines of this debate are pretty predictable.  While almost everyone agrees that players have free speech, many feel that the flag is sacrosanct.  They think that ungrateful players, black players in particular, should ‘respect’ the flag.  It never occurs to them that respecting the flag is respecting free speech, not just including controversial or unpopular speech but particularly respecting controversial and unpopular speech.  The idea that they shouldn’t ‘politicize’ a sporting event because it ‘isn’t the right time or place,’ simply ignores the value of protest.

                Free speech is meant to be uncomfortable.  Trump and the people who agree with him want to make this about veterans and police officers, as if they are the only ones represented by the flag.  The rights the flag is supposed to represent belong to everyone, there is no special restriction on them that bars everyone from appropriating them however they see fit.  The players aren’t the ones politicizing football.  Playing the anthem at all is politicizing the game – there is nothing that mandates this.  If you don’t want sports to be political, then keep the flag and the anthem out of it.  Once it’s been introduced, no single point of view has the right to restrict how that symbol is used and interpreted.  (By the way, holding the flag horizontal over the field is desecrating the flag, too.)  The NFL is selling, and is getting reimbursed for, a cheesy version of patriotism that, just like the ‘love it or leave it’ crowd during the Viet Nam era, assumes that there is some righteous elite that own what this democracy represents.  The ‘shield’ is being used to recruit volunteers into the military which, again like Viet Nam, is engaged in ongoing conflicts of dubious merit.

                Colin Kaepernick’s protest started as a response to racism.  He wasn’t disrespecting veterans or cops.  Trump made it about him and diverted or attention away from the main issue.  If it’s ok for country singers and Milo Yiannopoulos can wear flag clothing (another violation of the 1926 code for displaying the flag) why can’t football players kneel for the anthem?   This becomes an argument about who owns America.  The answer is that we all do.  It isn’t supposed to be a monolithic thing.  It’s supposed to be a dynamic and evolving ideal.  You shouldn’t have to agree with what a protester is saying to appreciate the protest.  Like all honest protesters, he has paid the price for his gesture. 

                Democracies have to value free speech.  They have to value the dissenting voices, because they mark the areas of concern and disagreement that have to be resolved.  Increasingly, we have become a nation of people that can’t or won’t even listen to a dissenting opinion.  This is true on the right and the left, although in different ways.  Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than college campuses.  Colleges should value a diversity of opinions, even if it makes some students ‘uncomfortable.’  Their discomfort should be addressed, but not at the expense of silencing other points of view.  College should be a physically safe environment but not an intellectually safe environment.  That is hard to do, but rigid codes of behavior will not bring people together.  On the other hand, it puzzles me why someone like Yiannopoulos should speak on a college campus at all, not because of his politics but because of his lack of any semblance of intellectual rigor or honesty.  College isn’t just about expressing any opinion but about the thoughtful and rigorous exchange of opinions.  Name calling just doesn’t fit the bill.  He should be allowed to speak, but it’s hard to see why a college campus should host him.

                As someone who lived through the Viet Nam era on a college campus, it’s distressing to see how little has changed.  It’s distressing to see people shout at each other in more and more combative and shrill tones.  It’s appalling to see a President call a citizen an SOB because of his political views.  Trump can’t help himself.  It’s doubtful he’s even read the Constitution, but we should.  We have a lot to talk about, a lot to work through.  If a football player kneeling for the anthem is too much for us to bear, what are we going to do about the real tough things to come.  As that old civil rights anthem advised, ‘keep your eyes on the prize.’