re: Eric Reid takes a knee....on Veterans Day weekend

Booyah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rebel and RedTigerRulz


Did you "REID" that article you are referring to? It is from LAW & CRIME: Donald Trump and many like-minded Americans would much prefer that professional athletes “should not be allowed” to refuse to make patriotic gestures. The sincerity of those gestures, however, does not seem to be part of this debate – not even when they are paid for by the government itself.

NFL players chose to make a wordless statement, using the public stage available to them yesterday. The statement those players actually made conflicted directly with a fake statement of patriotism that the NFL received millions to have those same players make.

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The national anthem story you should actually be outraged over.

The American government pays the NFL to tell its players to stand during the national anthem. That’s right.For those of you whose heads are beginning to spin, let me lay this all out legally. The First Amendment prohibits any government entity from forcing an individual to say anything. That’s the basic concept of freedom of speech. In a related story, forcing people to salute a flag or swear an oath of loyalty to the government is pronounced, “tyranny.”

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Before 2009, football players standing for the national anthem wasn’t even a thing. The teams stayed in the locker room until after “and the hoooome of the braaaave,” and then ran onto the field. No one was offended, and no one was on cable news eliciting tears from disrespected military families.

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If the waste of taxpayer money isn’t gross enough, grab your barf bag as you learn about the motivation behind the expenditure. The DOD and the National Guard were marketing to sports fans. The concept was that if sports fans saw their favorite athletes standing for the Star Spangled Banner, or saluting the flag, they’d emulate that behavior and become more patriotic themselves.

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In 2015, Senator John McCain and the Senate Oversight Committee issued a statement and corresponding report condemning practice of “paid patriotism,” as charades, “conducted not out of a sense of patriotism, but rather done “for profit in the form of millions in taxpayer dollars going from the Department of Defense to wealthy pro sports franchises.”


These paid tributes included on-field color guard, enlistment and reenlistment ceremonies, performances of the national anthem, full-field flag details, ceremonial first pitches and puck drops. The National Guard paid teams for the “opportunity” to sponsor military appreciation nights and to recognize its birthday. It paid the Buffalo Bills to sponsor its Salute to the Service game.vi DOD even paid teams for the “opportunity” to perform surprise welcome home promotions for troops returning from deployments and to recognize wounded warriors.