In his column dated Oct. 17, Mr. Flood obviously wanted to refute my previous letter, and he tried very hard to do so. However, he never quite got there. Why? Because the facts that I relayed in my letter, regarding the NFL players' disrespect of the flag, the national anthem and the country, are completely true. Yet he never addressed those facts.
When faced with facts and logic that are contrary to their leftist positions, liberals will very often attempt to deflect attention from those facts. Mr. Flood, instead of addressing the facts of the NFL players' disrespecting of the flag, chooses rather to attempt to deflect attention onto President Trump, and onto comments he made concerning Sen. McCain, and the press.
(It is worthy of note here that President Trump's comment regarding the press, to which Mr. Flood refers, was made in response to a specific incident of demonstrably false information being communicated by them.)
In my letter, regarding Mr. Trump's comment about Mr. McCain, I simply made the observation that the president, like everyone else, has a right to his own opinion. Now here is the logic with which Mr. Flood seems to have a problem. A person's opinion, whatever it might be, on one single issue does not disqualify them from commenting on another unrelated issue. John McCain's war record and NFL players disrespecting the flag are not related. No matter how much Mr. Flood may desperately try and link them, in order to deflect from the facts of the latter issue, they are not logically related.
Now to the facts of the NFL players' protest. The protest is an intentional act of disrespect of the flag. Colin Kaepernick himself made that clear in a statement that he made in August 2016. "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color." The protest is therefore an intentional insult to the flag, the anthem, the country, and all people who hold those things as sacred, and worthy of respect.
The protest is nonsense. It is based on a lie. The narrative that police officers are on the hunt for black males is a complete and utter lie. It was fabricated by those on the political left, and proliferated by the mainstream news media, in multiple instances when they jumped to the conclusion that law enforcement officers were guilty of wrongdoing, before the facts had been adjudicated.
The protest is not about freedom of speech. The protest is taking place while the players are on the NFL's time. It is, therefore, not an issue of freedom of speech. They are subject to the rules and regulations governing the conduct of the employees of their employer.
You will not see persons on the left of the political spectrum, such as Mr. Flood, talk about these facts. They always prefer to deflect, and try to make someone else look like the bad guy. All the while they are attempting to make the real bad guys (the ones who are disrespecting the flag) look like heroes. That's what leftists do.
Lawrence McSwain
Lewes
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