The controversy over UPB cheerleaders kneeling for the National Anthem affords us a rather disturbing view of how some Americans regard First Amendment protections. The Constitution is not a salad bar where you pick what you like and leave the rest. It’s all or nothing.
Decades of observing American politics have shown me there are “patriots” and there are “those who love their country.”
“Patriots” worship the flag, National Anthem and Constitution (rarely reading it), jump up and down while whistling Yankee Doodle, unquestioningly accepting the red-white-and-blue-my-country-right-or-wrong blather from the corporate-owned lickspittles in Congress. They support sending Americans off to die in endless foreign wars that never yield victory, only corpses … and profits for the arms manufacturers.
On the other hand, “Those who love their country” exercise critical thinking, question authority, speak truth to power, unfailingly uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and do not confuse love of country with theology. The Constitution is a secular document, Jesus didn’t give it to George Washington on Mount Sinai.
Popular views need no protection. Mr. Terwilliger’s attack on free speech cheapens the sacrifice of thousands of Americans who have died to guarantee the freedom to express unpopular views. Insisting those who break no laws while peacefully exercising constitutionally protected freedoms be penalized for same is a direct attack on the Constitution and basic American principles.
These cheerleaders display exemplary courage in publicly expressing themselves, contrasting starkly with Mr. Terwilliger’s call for the entire community to bully the cheerleaders and the university. This rather cowardly repression of dissent belongs to North Korea and jihadi terrorists, not America. Our enemies do not need to destroy us if “patriots” holding views like Mr. Terwilliger do it for them.
Mr. Terwilliger’s “patriotism” amounts to protecting America by negating the First Amendment, thus holding two contradictory ideas as true at the same time, a psychological condition called “cognitive dissonance.”
Two questions. (1) would there be a brouhaha if the cheerleaders were Caucasian? and (2) when do we start burning books in front of the Hanley Library? Because that’s exactly where Mr. Terwilliger’s un-American brand of “patriotism” leads.
Gene Johnson
Hazel Hurst
