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Message: [QUOTE="Bigpetunia, post: 1795576, member: 1772"] Whenever issues such as this arise, as they often do, I am unfailingly taken aback by the nature of so many responses…responses that illustrate widespread failure to understand the most important founding principles upon which our nation was established. These are the principles that are reverently enshrined in our most important founding documents, the very documents so trumpeted by blatantly phony politicians whose chest thumping makes a mockery of any proper notion of patriotism. I am a white, ardently heterosexual male. As such, I consider myself unqualified to stand in the shoes of those from any of the other sub-groups that comprise our population, and it would be inappropriate for me to suggest that I can do so. Like it or not (I like it!), diversity is the ultimate destiny of our country. That reality, by definition, inevitably leads to different forms of both discrimination and misunderstanding. In other words, it leads to different forms of protest, many of which, as in this case, the majority will surely find offensive. If they didn’t, those forms would, of course, be much less effective Bertrand Russell, no stranger to controversy himself, famously cracked that patriotism is the willingness to kill or be killed for reasons that are trivial. Though I understand his point, especially in the light of some of the recent conflicts in which our nation has been engaged, it is overly cute and fundamentally wrong…wrong for the simple reason that there do, in fact, exist principles worth fighting, and potentially dying for. One of the easiest exercises on our planet is identifying countries that would respond to protests such as the ones in which these athletes engaged with imprisonment, torture, and/or death. Our primary focus should, I think, be on a jubilant celebration of the fact that we reside in a country in which such protests can be expressed with relative impunity. In short, I have ZERO problem with those who state that they find such protests disrespectful and offensive. I just think the next sentence should [U]always[/U] be, “But I would surrender my life fighting to defend his or her right to do so!” [/QUOTE]

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