RUTHFULLY YOURS

Old Glory is almost certainly the most honored flag in the world.

The late political scientist Samuel Huntington marveled at its place in our national life: We pledge allegiance to it. The national anthem celebrates it. An incredibly elaborate code stipulates how it is to be displayed, handled, and maintained. It even has its own holiday.

“Since the Civil War,” Huntington wrote, “Americans have been a flag-oriented people. The Stars and Stripes has the status of a religious icon and is a more central symbol of national identity for Americans than their flags are for peoples of other nations.”

The NFL players who kneel during the national anthem — a phenomenon that increased exponentially after President Donald Trump colorfully demanded that they stand — are disrespecting the most potent and enduring national symbol of the most patriotic nation on Earth.

Not only are they wrong to do so, they aren’t delivering the devastating rebuke to Trump that they may imagine.

The power of national — or imperial — symbols isn’t anything new. The Romans couldn’t abide the collective disgrace of losing their standards to the enemy in battle, and would undertake great exertions to win them back.

The American flag is layered with history and meaning. As Tim Marshall recounts in his book A Flag Worth Dying For, its roots probably reach back prior to the country’s independence. It may owe its red and white stripes to the flag of the Sons of Liberty, the revolutionary agitators who carried out the Boston Tea Party.

The “rebellious stripes” of that flag, lacking a field of stars, don’t look like much. In 1777, the Continental Congress added the stars — “white in a blue field representing a new constellation.”

The flag took time to catch on. The Civil War, which tested the integrity of the flag, represented a watershed. It came to be known as Old Glory at this time courtesy of a cussed merchant seaman named William Driver, who demonstrated a characteristic American attitude to the Stars and Stripes.

Driver had retired to Nashville, Tennessee, with his flag still in his possession. When local Confederates demanded that he hand it over, he replied that they were welcome to take it … over his dead body. Secreted away in a bed quilt, the flag was eventually handed over to Union forces, and the legend of Old Glory spread.

After the war, Union veterans advocated for the display of the flag and for its veneration. The National Flag Conference of 1923 — yes, there was a national flag conference — set out the code subsequently adopted by Congress.

Per the code, “the flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing.” It states that “no disrespect should be shown to the flag,” and when it is taken down, it should be placed into “waiting hands and arms.”

Because the left dominates the news media, the entertainment media and academia, Americans are swimming — actually, drowning — in an ocean of lies.

Here are a few examples:

America is racist.

America oppresses its minorities.

America oppresses women.

Universities have a culture of rape.

There are more than two genders.

All cultures are morally and culturally equal.

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma were caused, or made more intense, by global warming.

Israel is the villain in the Middle East conflict.

Western civilization is a euphemism for “white supremacy.”

The latest lie of the left is that, with regard to the conflict between the NFL and President Donald Trump, the president is the “divisive” party.

Whenever people on the left tell one of these lies, I always wonder if they really believe it. I have concluded that they nearly always do. Which is more frightening than if they knew they weren’t telling the truth. With people who know they aren’t telling the truth there is always hope. But there is no hope for people who believe their lies.

What other conclusion could any fair-minded person reach when people say with a straight face that Trump is the divisive party with regard to his conflict with players refusing to stand for the National Anthem?

Apparently, the question, “Who started it?” means nothing to the journalists, politicians and NFL players, coaches and owners who call the president “divisive.”

So, before discussing Trump’s reaction, our fellow Americans on the left need to answer some pretty simple questions: Has the behavior of those athletes has been divisive? Is kneeling while tens of thousands of people are standing divisive? Is publicly showing contempt for the American flag for which innumerable Americans risked their lives, were terribly injured, or died divisive?

The answers are so obvious that if someone denies that those actions are divisive, it inevitably raises another question:

Why would anyone deny it?

Here are three likely reasons:

First, most people on the left think that they are centrists, or at most center-liberal. Therefore, they deem whatever they believe to be normative and deem whoever differs with them to be divisive and ultimately extremist.

This is true for every issue. Take same-sex marriage. Redefining marriage to include two people of the same sex was the most radical change in the history of the family — far more radical than, say, banning polygamy. Yet, I have never read or heard a person who favored same-sex marriage acknowledge that this was a radical change, not to mention divisive. On the contrary, people on the left believe that all those who wanted to retain the only definition of marriage any society has ever had — the union between the two sexes — are divisive and extremist.

Likewise, in the eyes of the left — the media, academia and the Democratic Party — it is not professional athletes who have refused to stand for the national anthem who are divisive; it is the president and all others who condemn the players for doing so.

Was the president’s rhetoric over the top? I believe some of it was — specifically, calling the players “sons of b———.” No politician, let alone the president of the United States, should use expletives publicly.

But if the president had sharply rebuked the players and the NFL using soaring rhetoric, the left would have similarly accused him of being divisive.

Imagine the president had begun his comments by saying something along these lines:

“To see professional athletes publicly dishonor the flag for which hundreds of thousands of Americans have died, the flag that millions of Americans have seen drape the coffin of their child, their spouse, their sibling, their parent, or other loved one is as morally repulsive as it un-American. Of course, these players have the right of free speech — and so do I, and that is precisely the right I am exercising now.”

Had he spoken that way, would the left not have characterized him as divisive?

There is a second reason the left portrays the president, not the players, as divisive. They agree with the players that the flag represents a systemically and socially racist country. How could they not? The left is the primary reason many Americans believe that America, the least racist multiracial country in history, is a racist country.

A third reason the left calls the president, not the players, “divisive” is that the left will say anything about those with whom it differs. The left sees language as a tool — not with which to express truth but with which to defeat its enemies. From Stalin calling Trotsky a fascist to the American media calling Trump and his supporters “Nazis” and “white supremacists,” lying about one’s political enemies is as part of leftism as hydrogen and oxygen are of water.

And why have non-leftist NFL coaches and owners also called the president “divisive?” Because they if they told the truth — that the players are the divisive party here — they would have no team.

An Army recruit starts off with a salary under $20,000. Thousands of active duty military personnel are on food stamps. Millions of veterans rely on them to feed their families and themselves.

That’s how we treat the best of us. Here’s how we treat the worst of us.

An NFL rookie’s minimum salary is $465,000. And the majority of NFL players are usually bankrupt a few years after retirement because they blew through most of their money. Dozens of NFL players are arrested every year on charges ranging from murder to rape to animal abuse.

2017 was a banner year for the NFL with three times as many arrests as last year.

Along with the usual drunk driving and disorderly conduct arrests, there were 7 arrests for assault/battery, 6 for drugs and 5 for domestic violence.

The Seattle Seahawks announced that they weren’t going to “participate in the national anthem” because of the “injustice that has plagued people of color in this country”. While they lost that game, they are one of the top ranked teams in arrests. Alongside the Los Angeles Rams, the Green Bay Packers and the New York Jets, all of whom showed some solidarity with the anti-American protests, these top NFL criminal teams have racked up arrests for domestic violence, drugs, DUI and assault and battery.

Is it any wonder they think the justice system is unfair? They’re criminals.

Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall was one of the early players to reject the Anthem. The Broncos supported his actions. As his teams have supported him during nine domestic violence accusations.

Did any of the women he stabbed, punched or choked have any choice about taking a knee?

It’s no wonder that so many of the NFL’s millionaire scumbags are eager to join Colin Kaepernick’s protests against the justice system by degrading our anthem.

It’s because they’re criminals.

And it’s no wonder that the NFL stands behind its thugs. If a team can shrug at a 6’4 man beating a woman, what’s a little anti-American tantrum by a prize property that makes them millions of dollars?

The only question is why are the rest of us subsidizing it?

Rarely has an intelligence apparatus engaged in systematic lying—and chronic deceit about its lying—both during and even after its tenure. Yet the Obama Administration’s four top security and intelligence officials time and again engaged in untruth, as if peddling lies was part of their job descriptions.

So far none have been held accountable. https://amgreatness.com/2017/09/25/a-lying-quartet/
Those exemptions are likely because, in hubristic fashion, all four assumed their service to progressive noble agendas would justify any odious means felt necessary to achieve them.

In part their liberal credentials were seen as guarantees that the media either would ignore or excuse their dissimulation. And in part, untruth was innate to them as lifelong and now seasoned Washington bureaucrats. Their reasons to be in Washington were largely a quest for media exposure, government sinecures, revolving door profiteering, and maintaining a host of subordinate toadies at their service. A harsh assessment, perhaps—but lying to the American people earns them such disdain.
Politically Correct Deception

Former Obama United Nations ambassador and National Security Advisor Susan Rice was rarely credible in any of her major public statements. Her dissimulation bordered on the pathological. Indeed, it went beyond even the demands put upon her for partisan spinning.

On five occasions, Rice lied to the media that the murder of Americans in Benghazi, Libya by al-Qaida affiliated-terrorists was a result of spontaneous rioting—in response to an obscure, rogue, and right-wing Coptic filmmaker. She later attributed such dissimulation to a lack of information, when we now know that the truth of Benghazi—and the larger landscape of events that ensured something like a Benghazi—were only too known. The video was a canard.

Rice assured the nation that the AWOL and traitorous Bowe Bergdahl was a hostage taken during combat and had served nobly (“with honor and distinction”). In fact, the renegade Bergdahl likely was exchanged for terrorist prisoners for two reasons: one, to diminish the number of terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as promised by Obama during his campaign, and two, to highlight the humanitarian skills of Barack Obama in bringing home an American “hero,” especially defined as one who was so loudly aware of his own country’s foibles.

Rice also assured the nation that her administration, through its diplomatic brilliance, had eliminated Bashar Assad’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. “We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical-weapons stockpile,” she lied. That supposed coup was worth the price of inviting in the Russians to the Middle East after a 40-year hiatus. In fact, almost immediately after entering office, President Trump was forced to bomb Assad’s WMD depots to prevent Syria’s air force from dropping more nerve gas on civilians.

Susan Rice

Once House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) announced that key administration officials illegally might have unmasked and leaked the names of U.S. citizens on government intercepts connected to the Trump campaign and transition team, Rice issued a blanket denial (“I know nothing about this”). That assertion predictably was untrue, as Rice herself was forced to concede when she altered narratives to later justify rather than deny her role in such improper leaking.

Rice assured the nation there were no hidden side-deals in the Iran Deal, such as a prisoner-swap concession. “And we were very specific about the need not to link their fate to that of the negotiations, because we had no idea for certain whether negotiations would succeed or fail. We didn’t want to give the Iranians a bargaining chip to use against us in the negotiations,” she fibbed. In response, Americans knew almost immediately by her disavowals that there were quid pro quo hostage-prisoner trades that put the United States at a disadvantage.

Rice displayed an eerie habit of broadcasting her lies by preemptive denial that she was about to lie. In her case, the privileged Rice sometimes fell back on the boilerplate victimhood defense of racism and sexism. More likely, as with many Obama officials, she felt certain she could deceive with impunity out of contempt for the American non-elite and, like her associate Ben Rhodes, with full confidence in the obsequiousness and incompetence of the “know-nothing” media.

Boy Scout Sanctimonious Deception

Former FBI Director James Comey long ago lost his carefully crafted Boy Scout image of a truth-teller, buffeted in a sea of Washington deception. Like Rice, when Comey signals he cannot lie or that others are lying, we know that his own duplicity is forthcoming. The list of his untruths and unprofessionalism is growing, as continuous disclosures cannot be synced with either his congressional testimony or his public statements.

An NFL player is arrested, on average, every seven days.

Did you know, that as of this writing, it’s been 24 days since an NFL player was arrested? The odds that we would go that long in between player arrests are 25 to 1! In case you were wondering, there’s an entire website dedicated to tracking all the NFL players who have been arrested.

Oops. I just checked again. It’s now been zero days since an NFL player was arrested. Thanks, Los Angeles Ram Ethan Westbrooks! Westbrooks was arrested this weekend for speeding and being in possession of an unlicensed firearm. This is the second time in bracelets this year for Westbrooks, who was arrested in March on suspicion of domestic violence (the charges were later dropped).

According to NFLArrest.com, the record span between arrests is 65 days. The average span between player arrests is seven days. The site has been tracking player arrests since 2000 and has an interactive breakdown of all the data. You can track arrests by team, date, day of the week (unsurprisingly, Saturday is most popular), player position, or type of crime.

The NFL has been in the national spotlight for several years in relation to its personal conduct policy. High-profile cases involving domestic violence, in particular, have caused the NFL a great measure of embarrassment as the league has struggled to determine the appropriate level of punishment. According to its written policy:

The policy states that anyone associated with the NFL can be disciplined under this policy regardless of whether they are convicted of a crime. Players who have been arrested are routinely suspended by the league. It’s become almost routine to view the police blotter as a normal aspect of reporting on the NFL. CONTINUE AT SITE

Lee is famous for her depth of information and knowledge…. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas state that the Constitution is 400 years old. In other words, its writing would predate the Pilgrims.

In 1997, while on a trip to the Mars Pathfinder operations center in California, Jackson Lee asked if the Pathfinder had succeeded in taking a picture of the flag planted on Mars by Neil Armstrong in 1969.

In 2010 she opined ““Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working.” Forgot that Vietnam was unified in 1975.

As Jonathan Strong, then of the Daily Caller documented in 2011, she constantly referred to one staff member as “You Stupid Mother f…er,” threw her cell phone at another and demanded to be chauffeured by car when travelling between House office buildings (which are connected by tunnels) and that staffers run to the supermarket at 2 a.m. to buy garlic supplements for her. rsk

— Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) took a knee on the floor of the House tonight during a special order by the Congressional Black Caucus focused on rooting out racism and defending the First Amendment.

“Someone had the lack of judgment to provoke the situation and call their mothers a name,” Jackson Lee said of President Trump using “son of a bitch” last week to refer to NFL players who knelt during the National Anthem in protest of racial injustice.

“I refuse to accept that as a standard of leadership for the highest office in the world — and even if you never understand it… if you think you’re playing to your base, if you’re not the unifier, we will continue to stand in the gap and racism is going to be under our foot,” she said. “And you know where else it’s going to be? It’s going to be under our knee. Because we in the Congressional Black Caucus have always stood for what is right… there is no basis in the First Amendment that says you cannot kneel on the National Anthem or in front of the flag.”

Jackson Lee challenged Trump to identify which players’ mothers, by using the SOB slur, he was calling bitches. “That is racism. You cannot deny it,” she said of the insult.

The congresswoman then knelt and continued her floor speech. “I kneel in honor of the First Amendment,” she said. “I kneel because the flag is a symbol for freedom. I kneel because I’m going to stand against racism. I kneel because I will stand with those young men [in the NFL] and I stand with our soldiers. And I’ll stand with America.”

CBC Chairman Cedric Richmond (D-La.) in a statement earlier today faulted NFL owners who issued statements in support of their players’ right to free speech without acknowledging why they protested. “While a few of these statements mentioned ‘social injustice,’ ‘racial divides,’ and ‘societal issues,’ none of them explicitly mentioned the reason why Mr. Kaepernick and many others (professional athletes, celebrities, elected officials, and citizens) are taking a knee during the National Anthem,” he said.

“They are taking a knee to protest police officers who kill unarmed African Americans – men and women, adults and children, parents and grandparents – with impunity. They are taking a knee to protest a justice system that says that being Black is enough reason for a police officer to fear for his or her life,” Richmond said. “Those words were missing from the statements I read despite the fact that 70 percent of NFL players are Black and many of them, as well as their family and friends, have experienced racial profiling by police that leaves too many unarmed African Americans injured or dead.”https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/2017/09/25/jackson-lee-kneels-congressional-speech-honor-first-amendment/