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Should I remain standing with my cap off and hand over my heart?\u00a0 How ’bout hands at my sides?<\/p>\nShould I remain standing with my cap off and hand over my heart?\u00a0 How ’bout hands at my sides?<\/p>\n
What’s up with those people who are taking one knee?<\/p>\n
If I take the middle ground and stand with my arms locked together with the fan next to me is that OK?<\/p>\n
Wow!\u00a0 All of the controversy around this.\u00a0 Fueled by President Trump who states that “all football players who don’t stand during the National Anthem should be fired by the NFL Team owners.”<\/p>\n
What a bully!<\/p>\n
I’m as patriotic as the next person and believe we should respect our country which gives our right to free speech.\u00a0 (Remember that hate speech inciting violence \/ imminent danger isn’t free speech!!!)\u00a0 However, let’s remember the main reason why Colin Kaepernick took a knee in the first place last year.\u00a0 It wasn’t to disrespect his country.\u00a0 No, it was to draw attention to a still lingering big problem here in our beloved country:<\/p>\n
Racism<\/p>\n
Yes, it still exists today.\u00a0 In 2017.\u00a0 And yes, much of it is entangled with Inequality.<\/p>\n
I love our country.<\/p>\n
I hate racism.<\/p>\n
I hate inequality.<\/p>\n
I will fight for the freedom of all people in our country to both freely share their ideas (in a polite, civil, non-violent, non-hateful way) and to freely pursue all their dreams from an equal starting point once they enter adulthood!<\/p>\n
p.s.\u00a0 When I say, “equal” it doesn’t mean that everyone makes the same.\u00a0 We should be rewarded on the value we create for society as a whole so those who create more value should get more.\u00a0 What I do mean is that, at the starting line of adulthood at the age of 21, (following the track & field analogy), no one is at the starting block carrying a ball and chain (e.g. crushing debt, bad parenting, PTSD from child abuse, etc), in dilapidated running shoes (e.g. due to poverty, not being able to afford to go to college \/ trade school, etc.), in poor health (from years of a malnourished diet because they weren’t wealthy enough to eat right or due to generational drug addiction).\u00a0 In essence, the everyone at the starting line has an equal chance to win<\/strong>.\u00a0 How they run the race will determine who wins, though, and it’s perfectly fine that those who run the race with more heart, greater effort, and pure grit will go farther and achieve more fame and fortune than those who choose not to give it their all.\u00a0 Comment below if you have questions on this as I really want to be clear here!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Should I remain standing with my cap off and hand over my heart?\u00a0 How ’bout hands at my sides? What’s up with those people who are taking one knee? If I take the middle ground and stand with my arms locked together with the fan next to me is that OK? Wow!\u00a0 All of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kHU7-5Z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thelight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/umpires-1571563_640.jpg?fit=640%2C426","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions\/377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}