Last Sunday was the day after Veterans’ Day. It was proudly reported in the media that, in honor of Veterans’ Day, not a single NFL player took a knee during the National Anthem. Wow. What a tremendous show of patriotic zeal and fervor. The players stood for the Anthem.

          Whether or not the players have the right to protest the flag and the Anthem is up for debate. I believe that if the league made it mandatory then the players would have to stand. It would be a work place issue then. It is mandatory that the players wear helmets. It is mandatory that they wear the jersey of the team. But, the NFL is pretty much gutless, except for Jerry Jones of the Cowboys. So, the league is failing to make their players do the right thing. At the leagues expense. But the real issue to me is not whether they have the right to protest before a national audience. The real issue is that they are completely oblivious to what the flag and the Anthem that lifts the flag up really mean.

          On a hot day on a little island in the South Pacific, a young man was patching bullet holes in a bulldozer that was needed to finish the air field that was being constructed. The date was February 23, 1945 and the island was Iwo Jima. The young man had joined the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor. Three plus years of war on scattered islands in the Pacific had left scars, both physical and emotional. On that day he should have been on his way back to the states. He had fresh wounds that would be with him forever. As he worked on the dozer he was using a wooden board as a crutch to help get around. The shrapnel wound sustained on the day they hit the beach showed no signs of healing. The stitches kept opening up. He would have been gone except that not everyone on that island had his expertise. And, he chose to stay. At the moment, he was behind the lines, but there was no real safety on that rock. As he worked he had a rifle slung over his shoulder. If he had stopped to think about it he might have wondered why he had been so driven to lie about his age back in December, 1941 and get into this mess. Now, wondering if this war was going to end and, if it did, would he ever see his native Kentucky again, the man kept working, and bleeding, to get an airstrip in.

          Gradually, he began to realize that men were shouting, some cheering. He looked up to see men pointing toward the top of Mount Suribachi, one of the peaks on the island. Some men, officers mostly, had binoculars. Everyone was excited. That peak had been the sight of some fierce fighting and dying by the Marines. His eyes followed the pointing fingers, but he really couldn’t see anything. A navy Ensign stood on a bulldozer nearby with binoculars trained on the distant peak. The young man, rifle slung over his shoulder and a board for a crutch, called out to the Ensign. “Sir, what’s going on?” The Ensign lowered his binoculars and turned to the wounded sailor. His voice choking and tears running down is face, he said, “The flag, Chief, they got OUR flag flying on the mountain!”

          Later, the young man finally got a pair of field glasses and saw the flag himself. Maybe, after all, they would win. Maybe, after all, he would get home. Maybe this hell on earth he had been living would be over.

          Of course, it never was over, not really. For the rest of his life he would occasionally jerk awake at night thinking he was on one island or another and was being shot at. Over the next 20 years or so little bits of shrapnel would work out of his leg. For a long time, a backfire or sudden loud noise would make him duck down. He got to where he drank too much and he would never talk of his experiences. It wasn’t till he was older that he began to share his stories. For some reason, he shared with me, his only son. The stories came out in bits and pieces, and my perspective of my father slowly changed. The rush of emotion he felt when he saw that flag flying on that mountain was amazing. (The flag he saw was the first flag. After a while a photographer took some guys back up the hill and they reenacted the raising of the flag to get it on film. But my father saw the first one.)

          I used to be a football fan. A die hard, really. But that changed years ago. My father, though, was almost fanatical. When the anthem was played before a game, whether it be high school, college or pro, he was on his feet. He looked at that flag, always remembering that day on Iwo Jima. To him, that flag meant he might actually live. Now, however, if he were still alive, I am sure he wouldn’t be turning the games on, not even for his beloved Dolphins. He just wouldn’t watch men who refused to honor the flag he had fought for, and nearly died under.

          The base salary a pro football player makes is $465,000 a year. That is for a first year player straight out of college. For a first year borderline player. Generally, you make even more if you can stay drug free all year. Someone could argue and say that their careers are short, but a high school teacher won’t make that in ten years. (Takes even longer for a country preacher.) Along with salary, the NFL marginal rookie gets free travel, great health insurance and other perks just for riding the bench. And, if they make the team for year two, they get much more.

          But, what would it be if men like my father hadn’t vowed to protect the Constitution of the United States and to follow the flag? Because these NFL players are disrespecting the flag, players all down the line are disrespecting the flag. All the way down to third graders. If a child doesn’t appreciate their country now and if a child doesn’t respect their flag now, they will not defend it when they are older. If men like my father hadn’t existed, there would be no NFL now. If men like my father hadn’t existed, there would be no freedom to choose now. If men like my father hadn’t existed, there would be no United States now. And these big, burly NFL players would now be working in the mines or factories or doing almost anything else other than playing a kids’ game.

          What about the soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines that have followed that greatest generation? Korea, or Vietnam or the Cold War or the conflicts in the Middle East? Those men and women have laid their lives on the line so that we have safety and protection now. What better place for a terrorist attack than a packed football stadium on a Sunday afternoon? Two jetliners crashing into any stadium in the country would kill tens of thousands of people, including players who chose to kneel in disrespect of the flag. But, it is very likely never going to happen anytime soon because American men and women are following that disrespected flag to places far away from home to protect the spoiled and degenerate.

          Is there reason for kneeling? You can make an argument for anything, I suppose. But there is a price to pay. I won’t pay it, I’ll be gone and forgotten. In another 20 years or so the country might very well be wide open for attack by foreign powers. There will be no one there to stop them. Everyone will suffer, including those players who choose to take the knee now.

          A people who will not stand for their country will also not stand for God. Will God continue to bless America?