Confused Heretics.

• Author: Emord, Jonathan W.
• Position: WORDS & IMAGES

IN A BBC INTERVIEW, when asked if she was proud of America, Jane Fonda answered, "No." She was proud of the "resistance," but not of the U.S. Select NFL players, upon hearing the National Anthem, "take a knee," by which they mean to protest in the face of the very symbol of our nation, the American flag. The legacy of the U.S. is one of freedom, a freedom that Fonda and the NFL players very much depend upon, and exploit, to protest the country of liberty that has given them so much.

It is one thing to express an opinion; it is quite another to condemn the country that protects your right to voice that opinion. The former may make sense; the latter is illogical and absurd. Charitably, we may say that Fonda and the NFL players who take a knee are confused, woefully inarticulate, and misguided, conditions that painfully are apparent because their expressions of dissent are so obtuse and contrary to the proof extant in the lavish lives they lead in the U.S. More accurately, we may say that they are examples of what appear to be way too many "elite" individuals who do not comprehend that the spoils they enjoy are proof that, far from harming them, this bounteous land of freedom has enabled them to succeed in ways not possible anywhere else in the world.

Certainly, ingratitude of the sort they express is not new, just repulsive, unremarkable, and foolhardy. Theirs is the rant and romp of a juvenile, excusable but for the fact that they are adults, if by age only. In stark contrast to their incomprehensible expression, the First Amendment rises far above the pedestrian level, confirming that, even those like Fonda and Colin Kaepernick, who communicate ignorant or ill-conceived sentiments, are free to do so in the U.S., just as those who hear the words that offend have the right to call out this expression as folly. Were Fonda and Kaepernick the children of North Koreans, they would understand all too well what it means to live in a country where fundamental rights have no protection from the greatest threat to individual liberty, the monopoly of the state.

Unique among all nations, the U.S. was founded upon the principle that just governments derive their authority to govern from the consent of the governed; that just governments are instituted among men for the very purpose of protecting the rights of the governed; and that, if government presumes to violate that sacred compact, the government must be altered or abolished, because rights to life...