TOWSON, Maryland, Thursday, October 19, 2017 - When the commissioner of the NFL finished chatting with representatives of the players association, he met with the ultra left media. He said that there would be no requirement that the players stand for the playing of the Star Spangled Banner, also known to most of us as Our National Anthem. He added - and a whole lot of people let this slip by, mainly because the ultra left media didn't make a big deal about it (actually, the media made no deal about it; i.e., they ignored it) - that the league would work with the players on such issues as reducing sentences given for the commission of felonies.
You got that?
The NFL thinks that sentences given for such things as felony robbery and felony drug distribution are far too harsh, and now they are going to do something about it.
All this comes on the heels of the abomination which occurred here in Maryland and then up the road in Delaware. When? Yesterday.
Radee Labeeb Prince, a man with a police record that includes 15 felony convictions, was not behind bars yesterday.
No he was not behind bars. He was free.
Which makes the NFL and their players realize a lot of the work they want done is already being done by the judiciary. Had Prince been appropriately sentenced on anyone of 15 prior occasions when he was convicted of committing a felony, the three folk shot to death in Edgewood, and the other three shot and badly wounded in Edgewood and in Delaware, would be happy and at work today, not dead and/of shot and wounded.
But NFL Players and now the NFL itself, think prison sentences are too long.
Before they get into the meat of their argument, I hope they explain whether they are upset with the sentences given or the amount of time actually served. As I understand it, Prince at one point was sentenced to 25 years for a robbery conviction. Had he actually been asked to serve that sentence, yesterday would not have happened there in Edgewood or Delaware. But, you see, Prince didn't serve anywhere near 25 years.
Having been sentenced to 25 years for armed robbery, he served all of two years. And so I ask, is the NFL upset that folk like Prince get sentenced to 25 years for robbery, or is the NFL upset that he was forced to serve two long years. And so all of you understand, hear in These United States, robbery is, by definition, stealing something and using a weapon - like a gun or a knife or a bomb - to assist you in the theft.
Nobody was more discriminated against than the Tuskegee Airmen. They were black aviators who were members of the United States military during World War II. Even though they had proved their medal in countless tests, the military brass didn't want them to fly planes in combat missions. When the military finally gave in, the Tuskegee Airmen proved to be braver and more talented than anyone dare imagine. The Airmen stood for the anthem. Understand, they weren't standing to announce that the discrimination they were subjected to was okay. It wasn't, not then, not now, now ever. The Airmen stood because the promise of America, the goal of America, the ideal of America, is freedom and equality for every person, no matter their race, color or creed.
Many of the Airmen stayed in the military at the end of the War and went on to become some of the central players in the formation of the United States Air Force.
Just so you know.
And there are inequalities in the sentencing of some kinds of crimes. Until recently, some sentences for some forms of cocaine distribution were unfairly pronounced on Black Americans. The federal government knew that Blacks were the primary user group for cocaine in one of its forms. And they passed laws making convictions for distribution of that kind of cocaine a crime subject to very lengthy prison sentences. This, even though that kind of cocaine was no more lethal or otherwise pernicious than the use of other kinds of cocaine. A new law changed the sentences given in that particular situation. It was a good law.
My point is, protesting during the playing of the anthem is particularly inappropriate. The anthem is America's way of telling the world that our goals and aspirations are very high. Subsequent protests do not call into question our goals and aspirations. Instead, subsequent protests call into question a specific kind of wrong.
If somebody sits during the Anthem, I have no idea what they are protesting and I do not want to find out. When you protest during the anthem, you say that our goals and aspirations as a nation are bad. You say that the tremendous sacrifices made by those who fought for America and died for America are all junk.
But they never are. The only junk is what the anthem is being subjected to. How can it be that I oppose everything or most everything that a person sitting out the anthem opposes, but while they sit, I stand?
I stand because I want America to be all it can be. Those sitting it out say America isn't worth the trouble, or they say that they don't believe all Americans share those goals.
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