The following commentary by the Editorial Board of the Washington Post was posted on their website September 24, 2017:
IN 1943, with the nation mobilized for war against fascism, schoolchildren in West Virginia were required each morning to salute the American flag. The purpose, seemingly unexceptionable — and in fact not objected to by many — was “teaching, fostering and perpetuating the ideals, principles and spirit of Americanism.”
However, to Jehovah’s Witnesses the flag was an “image,” which, under their religious beliefs, their children were forbidden to salute. Students refused to do so and were expelled from school; parents were prosecuted; eventually, the case reached the Supreme Court.
There, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, Justice Robert Jackson wrote for a 6-to-3 majority that the state could not compel children to salute the flag. Reversing a court decision from just three years earlier, Jackson wrote, in the midst of war, what remains one of the enduring statements of confidence in what truly makes America great. “To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous, instead of a compulsory routine,” he wrote, “is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.”
What brings this to mind, of course, is President Trump’s latest bilious eruption. The first inclination, when he starts calling people “sons of b—–s” and waxing nostalgic for days when more concussions were inflicted for the entertainment of football fans, is to look away. It’s embarrassing, after all, to have to explain to the children that we have a president who speaks so rudely. It’s playing into the diversion he may seek when he finds himself flummoxed by Kim Jong Un or Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). And shouldn’t we be worrying about more important things — health care, tax reform, the inundation of Puerto Rico, the dangers of nuclear war?
But then, when Mr. Trump tweets that players should “stop disrespecting our Flag & Country,” it becomes clear: In some ways, there is nothing more important than his misguided understanding of how to truly respect the flag. Some NFL players have been participating in a fraught, challenging debate about race, policing and criminal justice, and Mr. Trump is offended by this. His response: fire the players who don’t share his views. Demand conformity and uniformity.
What’s offensive here is not what Mr. Trump thinks about Mr. Kaepernick. At this point, honestly, who cares? But when the president uses his bully pulpit to declare some speech legitimate and some beyond the pale; when his response to protest is to question patriotism rather than engage on the issue of unequal policing — then it is Mr. Trump who “disrespects our Flag & our Country.”
As Justice Jackson wrote three-quarters of a century ago, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
View the post here.