What does it mean to be patriotic?

To many people, apparently it means going through the motions. It’s about duty, not heart.

That’s not what it is to Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers Quarterback who refuses to stand for the anthem. For Kaepernick, patriotism is genuine. It’s not something you get paid to exhibit, it’s not something you do for approval, and it’s not something you do because everyone else is doing it.

Patriotism is respecting the flag as a symbol of an ideal, not as a mere tradition. It’s about caring for everyone in this country.

Do I stand up and put my hand over my heart when the anthem is sung? Yes. Why? Well, at first it was because I teared up at our beautiful anthem and wanted to show my appreciation. But now, honestly, it’s mostly because I don’t want to cause a scene.

I don’t feel all that patriotic, especially given the fact that this country was supposedly built on the claim that all men are created equal by a guy who kept his own children as slaves. That’s messed up, Thomas Jefferson — almost as bad as people defending him. I used to feel patriotic, once upon a time. But history class and books have ruined it for me.

I know the sting of that disappointment. I remember reading about the Trail of Tears, for example, and my patriotism died there. That was one in a long line of dominos. I thought America was beautiful, but it had a lot of problems. So I went from heartfelt allegiance to go-through-the-motions tradition.

I’m not the only one of a disillusioned new generation who feels this way. And yet we still stand and put our hearts over our chests. Who cares, we think. It’s a piece of cloth. The idea of respecting it out of sincerity is foreign to many of us. It’s a flag. A sheet on a flagpole. That’s it.

And when I hear many people talk about it…even though they tend to be more passionate about the flag than I am, they seem to be saying that what Kaepernick genuinely feels is unimportant. He just needs to do as everyone else does it. Out of some sense of “respect.”

You may not agree with Kaepernick. That’s fine. But he cares more than many of us. He cares enough about what the flag represents to not only research to see whether it’s accurately representing that, but to stay seated when he finds out the ideal doesn’t match the reality.

When I hear many people talk about it, their arguments seem to be saying that what Kaepernick genuinely feels is unimportant. He just needs to do as everyone else does it. Out of some sense of “respect.” Which indicates, to me, that we think the flag is more about respecting tradition than about some genuinely felt, truly patriotic ideal — or else they’d be focusing on the ideal, not going through the motions out of respect.

That’s what people don’t get. Kaepernick actually thinks the flag means something. More than almost all of us, he thinks about what it means to be a patriot of the American people when it comes to the anthem in a way many of us do not.

What does it mean to take seriously the motto “land of the free and the home of the brave”? Why is there less freedom for those shot by cops? Where in our culture are we still cowards?

Hardly any of us asks these questions during the anthem, but they are the questions we would be most likely to ask if we were true patriots who cared about every single individual fellow citizen in this country.

That’s what’s really bothering us. Kaepernick is pointing out what it means to take those values seriously. He’s showing what it means to take the large piece of cloth on a metal beam seriously as a symbol of freedom and bravery, of the truth that all men are equal and have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It means protesting when those rights are not fulfilled, not sweeping them under the rug with ceremonies and unthinkingly embraced tradition.

It means realizing that standing up and engaging in a tradition of standing to an anthem is not patriotic. It’s lip service, it’s rote tradition, it’s unthinking conformity.

Patriotism is engaging in love and care about the lives of everyone in your country, and realizing that this is more important than any piece of cloth.

And he’s doing so, by all accounts, at the risk of losing a lot of money from lost endorsements and less playing time.



Now, I’m not saying you have to agree with Kaepernick. I’m not saying here that you have to agree with everything he stands — or sits — for (I’ll likely make that argument separately).

But here it is absolutely important, I think, for us, as a nation, to realize the gravity of what he’s doing. To realize that America is not about allegiance to a flag, it’s about the fair treatment of the people in it, and that that’s more important than any red-white-blue sheet we hang on a flagpole. The flag is a symbol; it does not make America great, and pretending it does is not patriotism. It’s the opposite. It’s putting cloth above people.

Patriotism is realizing — in spite of our many differences — that the people are more important than anything else. People are more important than cloth, than songs, than feeling like the Fourth of July. And until we put people at a top priority — until you put people at a higher priority than cloth — Kaepernick is more patriotic than you are, because he knows that patriotism is about people, not red-white-blue sheets.

And he knows it deeply and profoundly enough for the symbol of the people, the flag and the ideals we so often claim to associate it with, to actually mean something to him. It’s not his disrespect of the flag’s ideals that’s causing him to sit down. It’s his respect for them. It’s not a lack of patriotism that causes him to sit down. It’s his patriotic concern for the people of the country, and his respect for a flag he does not want to insult with heartless tradition, blissful ignorance, or passivity — while so many of us do just that.

Patriotism here is not dedication to the flag, it’s dedication to the people. So when we ignore that by standing out of our wearied sense of tradition or teary-eyed blissful ignorance, we’re being forced to deal with the uncomfortable truth that the sitting Colin Kaepernick is more patriotic than we ever were.

Let’s be honest.

That’s what’s really bothering us.

Thanks for reading.

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