Gentlemen & Ladies - I may not be here for a while.

Not because of anyone here, to be sure. But, I was on the Steelers board following the debacle there with Villenueva. After reading the story and the notice posted by their leader, the younger Rooney, I knew I had to express my feelings. So I posted the following:


"The so called "protestors" who fail to stand when the national anthem is played need to go read the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, and then study U.S. History. It has never been the government's place to legislate what people believe. There are those people who will never believe in racial equality in the nation on all sides of the racial divides, usually thinking their particular DNA is the best and the rest of humanity are secondary creatures. There is no legislation which will change such minds.

But, the United States, as constituted, stands for the rights of all people. That is the way the country was formed. If those who are willing to act about racial equality wish to do something about the continuing existence of the problem - then do something. But do NOT besmirch the very emblem of the nation which grants them the right to work to change things for the people of the country. In other nations, they would be rounded up and sent to the Gulag, the Death Camps, the work farms, or be shot, or just disappear in the night for simply being in the same place as those protesting.

It is the protection of that for which OUR flag stands which gives them the right to protest what they feel is discriminatory and unjust. To protest by decrying the legitimate symbol of the very country constituted with that right is asinine, immature, ill-educated and self-serving attention garnering of the first degree.

They ought to be saluting the flag, just as patriots who served, fought, and died to invest the citizens with and to protect those very rights under which they sit, kneel or hide have done for over two hundred years. It is that devotion to the cause, birth, and continued existence of the nation for which that flag stands which grants them the right to betray, besmirch, and denigrate that very symbol about which they protest. Those under-educated privileged children with the bodies of men ought to realize that they are the beneficiaries of all the concepts and ideals for which that flag stands when they besmirch it by kneeling. They deny the integrity of the symbol of the ideals upon which this country was founded, which gives them that right when they so do. It is their right, but it betrays their lack of perspicacity concerning the founding of this nation.

I have decided that as much as I love watching the NFL, as long as players do not stand for the flag of the nation which protects their rights, I will no longer support them with my time or finances. When those overgrown children start acting as if they could be adults, that might change. But for now, this is one veteran and citizen who will not help pay their engorged and luridly immense salaries through the complicated process of the games being played sponsored by products which we are to purchase to enable the league to pay those salaries to play a childhood game with more violence than sportsmanship."


I will keep checking in with this board, because a good number of you I consider friends. I realize that because of what I posted above, that could possibly change with some. But, until things are more in keeping with the fundamental concepts under which we, in this country, all live, as a veteran, and citizen this is where I must stand. I ask nothing of any of you save that you continue to regard me as one of this band.

(P.S. - I also realize that my spelling is not what it used to be, but my typing has become even worse. I also ask that this not become a brawl. Discussion, of course. I ask none to recant, or change - but I do ask that everything remain civil!)

Grace and peace be with you!