I was searching to see if the NFL had made any decision about requirements for players during the national anthem when I noticed a hit that was a little bit unusual:
https://qz.com/1102238/americans-can...ahs-witnesses/
Out of curiosity, I followed the link and read the page. What I read saddened me and even frightened me a little. In 1940, the Supreme Court, in an 8 to 1 decision, ruled that public schools could force children who were Jehovah's Witnesses to stand, salute the flag, and recite the pledge of allegiance in class even though they had religious objections to doing so. According to the article, that decision
led to mob violence across America with Witnesses beaten, tarred and feathered, even kidnapped. Some were hanged, others forced to drink castor oil. Their businesses were boycotted and their homes set on fire. “Nothing parallel to this…has taken place since the days of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s,” the American Civil Liberties Union said at the time.
In 1943, the Supreme Court reversed its position in another case involving Jehovah's Witnesses children and the pledge of allegiance. (The vote was 6 to 3. Three judges changed their minds, and two judges who had been appointed after the 1940 decision joined the majority.)
The article implies that the court reversed itself because of the violence. I have read both opinions, and I didn't see much that they wrote to indicate that the violence was a factor, but several of the comments in the 1943 opinion expressed ideas that I have had since this conversation first started, but couldn't quite figure out how to express:
Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.
The case is made difficult not because the principles of its decision are obscure, but because the flag involved is our own. Nevertheless, we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous, instead of a compulsory routine, is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.
We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.
Words uttered under coercion are proof of loyalty to nothing but self-interest. Love of country must spring from willing hearts and free minds, inspired by a fair administration of wise laws enacted by the people's elected representatives within the bounds of express constitutional prohibitions. These laws must, to be consistent with the First Amendment, permit the widest toleration of conflicting viewpoints consistent with a society of free men.
The ceremonial, when enforced against conscientious objectors, [is] more likely to defeat than to serve its high purpose ...
. . . all attempts to influence [the mind] by temporal punishments, or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, . . .
I understand fully that the Supreme Court decision was regarding forcing school children to recite the pledge of allegiance and does not apply directly to NFL players, but I believe that the ideas I quoted above are universal truths that apply to all situations and are at the core of what America truly stands for. So it saddens me to see so many people who, in the name of the flag, want to deny the principles that the flag represents. I understand that many of you feel very angry, disgusted, perhaps other emotions, and you have a right to feel that way. I would beg of you, however, to try to put those emotions aside long enough to honestly consider whether forcing the players to stand during the anthem is really going to improve this nation in any way.
The part that frightens me is that I see signs that this issue is progressing the same way that things did after the 1940 SCOTUS decision. Remember, this started last year with one player. A few picked it up last year. A handful continued it this year. It was pretty much dying out until the president decided to start an extended campaign against it. In one week we went from a handful taking a knee to a couple of hundred taking a knee, raising a fist, etc. He continues to incite people to anger. I don't know exactly what people are referring to when they talk about Texas A&M's Kyle field, but is sounds like it might be implying physical violence against protesters. All in all, I see the rhetoric getting more and more heated and people are getting more and more angry.