Good folk. Good thoughts. Good intentions can stand on their merits or on their own two feet without qualification. When we see things as good people, we have a certainty that even standing among others, that the individual goodness that we possess is like a beacon of hope and virtue and that even the individual will radiate, however invisible to others, our virtues.
In short, to our God, whomever our creator is, will see our heart and know full well our intentions have but one purpose - to broadcast the highest level of virtue. We have no need to explain ourselves or our actions at the end of any day or before our maker upon our death about the purity of our hearts or our positions.
Evil always has explaining to do. Evil is cowardice. Evil is always equivocation and shifty. Evil cannot stand on its own two feet and to defend itself by what is. Evil is always darkness. It radiates nothing but fear and loathing and contempt. Evil cannot be a lighthouse of virtue for its very purpose is to extinguish the light of others so that evil cannot be exposed for what it is. Evil is temptation and misdirection. It is not an act of strength to diminish others. Evil seeks to hide in the masses and to convince all that to hold a selfish thought is a greater reward and purpose than to be exposed by the light and to stand as an individual.
You cannot stand for the light when you are kneeling. Kneeling is an act of overt submission - and goodness is subservient to no one. It just is what it is. Evil will always seek to strike down those who stand for the light and goodness. Those who stand will necessarily be subject to ridicule and the sword of evil shall indeed seek to remove the head from those who stand in order to get that person to submit.
Kneeling in history has not been a virtue - it is a sign of submission and surrender.
Even in this nation's history where we value the individual, the individual is called upon to defend the nation and its ideals against foreign and domestic threats. That is why there is an oath of office. And while the rest of us as mere mortals undertake no oath, we do pledge our allegiance to the flag and to the nation for which it stands. We rise upon our feet to make it so proclaimed that we stand for the ultimate goodness and virtue of the nation's ideals - even if the men and women who have gone before us have sinned and done bad things. We are more than just what was or what is or what will be - we have the virtue of the light that we seized - the ultimate goodness in striving to be better and to improve. We don't exist as a nation to be deceivers even if some of our members so seek to do just that.
Our ultimate celebration is of individual liberty - that we place so much value upon individual rights - and of individual responsibilities of a free people to stand and act on goodness. Evil cannot stand those ideals and will always seek to fracture us and to tempt us and to deceive us. The power of the individual is such a precious commodity that our first ten amendments to our founding document seeks to protect individual rights above all else. The individual is granted rights upon virtue of birth that no one can take and no one can seize.
But evil does make grand attempts at seizing our God given rights. And evil will always craft forked tongue excuses to take our liberty or to shape its narrative into inventing liberties. The ultimate test of when virtue is real is when acting upon virtue interferes with no one elses' virtue. A right that is protected never can be used to interfere with another's right to so practice. And while we have the right of freedom of speech, we have no right to be heard. We might be able to yell "fire" in a crowded theater, but acting that way threatens the life and freedom of others as panic ensues and lives are threatened in the natural expression of fleeing from the fire.
In very few areas of our Representative Republic are we commanded to do anything for the collective. Our obligations as citizens, as individuals, is to act in our best intentions, and to recognize that others exist. In our system of government and our system of faith, acting out of selflessness is always superior to acting in our selfishness. Placing ourselves above all is not an act of goodness; it is an act of evil.
Goodness would have us conduct our lives in a matter of our own pleasure until such time as that acting infringes upon someone else's life experience. Our rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are shining lights of virtue, but there is a darkness to it if we so act without regard to others.
And there is the paradox of light and freedom. We are free to do with our lives as we choose, but we are bound by restrictions when that exercise of life threatens another or infringes on his rights. Goodness will be self evident as we take into account respect for others; darkness respects no such virtue and will seek to quash others so as to bring them down to the level where evil can be heard. Evil never rises for it seeks to hide and seeks to confine others free will and spirit. Yet, evil will always try to redefine virtue so that evil looks like virtue. Evil will make it so that honesty and the truth are made vile why dishonesty, deception and lies are made to be virtuous.
And so it is with the mere act of standing for the National Anthem. In a gathering of free citizens with divergent and similar beliefs, we are called upon by the act of the creation of our nation to pause for a moment and to contemplate our life. Some will contemplate their thanks to those who died so that we might continue to be free. Some might think of their next meal. Some might pause to give thanks for nothing as they contemplate their own misery.
But in that moment when we rise in a collective pause, that rising is no more than a respect for that moment. Rising is a mere task that is asked of us. And even as our goodness might only be limited to rising for the National Anthem to be played, it is a mere price to pay for us as others have paid a price where they no longer can stand at all.
There are those who undertake celebrations of themselves and seek not to pay heed at that moment. In a land of the free people that we are, those who choose not to stand for the National Anthem's play are not hauled off and shot or tortured. But that is the rub - evil will have those who kneel to redefine their cause and actions to be something that the light of virtue can see is dishonesty and deception. The very act of kneeling places a person above all others at that moment they choose to kneel while the rest of us take pause to respect and to honor. There is not one single other way to view an act of overt defiance at that moment. When the National Anthem is played at that venue, the good would have no reason to not stand for a moment and to contemplate their thoughts; but to defy the act of standing and to make one's self the spotlight even if joined by others so inclined to squat as well, that is not virtue. That is theft. That is a most selfish act taken during the time of respect for our nation.
Granted, many in our lives today seek to pay no respect to anything. So many of us now place our hearts and ideals above others. We know it all. We have angst in our hearts and seek to make those others who disagree with us to pay for our pain. And we'll even claim as our pain the centuries of ills that we can horde as our own. There are many of us who collect claims of pain as badges of courage and that those people make their life purpose to be an eternal victim and the more misery they can make for others all the better for it. There are those who do all of this and that extend their hands to others so that a chain of misery and victimhood can be formed where our plights are so much more virtuous than the nation.
"How is it that goodness can exist here," they say, "when misery and slavery and bad things have happened to my people?"
If we accept their basic cries of question on the face, it would seem logical that to squat before the nation during the National Anthem's play should be celebrated as virtue. After all, these fine men and women who squat as the Anthem plays are acting out of their hearts' expression. Right?
Well, if we were to assume that our nation's purpose is to just exist, then maybe these people would be advancing goodness; but our nation is not static; it has not adopted "my way or the highway" as its founding pathway. Our nation seeks to improve. For once only property owners could vote. For once only men could. For once an entire race could be property to another. But this nation was formed with a trajectory and purpose of advancement and healing and correcting its own mistakes.
Outside of the national venue of the sport or convention or whatever brings people together to play the National Anthem, each one of these squatters is so free to take a knee on their own time; but they choose to exploit the moment that they did not pay for, that they did not earn, that they did not make happen, and they seek to proclaim themselves as the moment and not to partake in at least acknowledging the national trajectory of healing and improvement. It is thus that to kneel or to squat while the rest of us stand that we cannot help but see not standing as a punitive, repugnant, childish, and immature action by loudmouths and miscreants. We do not diminish or seek to impugn you for having the audacity to not stand like free men at a moment other than this, but how dare you seek to elevate your cause over everything else at this moment of our national pause? How much more selfish can you be but to steal attention for yourself and for your causes during a time when we merely ask you to stand and to shut your mouth?
In the end, you can tell us you have no intention of insulting our flag or our military, or our collective whatever. But your insistence of your virtue does not mean you aren't doing just what you say you aren't. Because your kneeling and squatting is a defiance that is so selfish that it makes your message so insulting that much more than if you just stood with a middle finger raised.
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