Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick commented for the first time since getting Nike to pull their Betsy Ross sneakers — by bashing the United States on the Fourth of July. Not that this is a surprise to conservatives, but Kaepernick isn’t even trying to hide his antipathy for the anthem, the flag, and the nation they represent anymore.
Apparently convinced that the year is still 1855, Kaepernick quoted part of a famous speech by abolitionist Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” to make a point about what a terrible country America is on Independence Day.
“What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours, not mine…There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour,” Kaepernick tweeted, quoting Douglass.
“What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours, not mine…There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.”
– Frederick Douglass pic.twitter.com/IWLujGCJHn— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) July 4, 2019
Kaepernick bashes America on July 4th
Kaepernick stirred controversy days before Independence Day after he convinced Nike, with whom he has an advertising partnership, to pull a Betsy Ross flag-themed sneaker from production. As a huge throng of patriots gathered in the National Mall to celebrate America’s birthday, the Black Lives Matter activist doubled down Thursday with a slavery-era quote from one of America’s truly great men.
Kaepernick quoted a portion of a speech that Douglass delivered to an abolitionist group in 1852, about a decade before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. In the famous speech, Douglas rails against the barbarism of the slaveholding system that he escaped as a young man. While lauding the Founding Fathers as honorable, brave men, Douglass delivers a scorching, impassioned rebuke of the nation’s hypocrisy for tolerating a practice inconsistent with Christianity and the principles of the Declaration of Independence:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
In response, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) pointed out that Kaepernick quoted Douglass without context: Douglas was “not anti-American; he was, rightly and passionately, anti-slavery,” Cruz tweeted. The Republican went on to cite the speech’s conclusion, in which Douglass closes with a hopeful vision that America will progress ever forward, and praises the “genius” of the American Republic and its “great” Declaration of Independence.
“Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country … While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age,” Douglass wrote.
Cruz encouraged all Americans to read the full speech and provided a link to the full text: “it is powerful, inspirational, and historically important in bending the arc of history towards justice.”
Anti-patriots on the Left
Douglass was attacking the hypocrisy and wickedness of slavery, not the United States, its Founding Fathers, its republican government, or its core principles. By partially quoting the speech, Kaepernick seemed to be making a point about what leftists often call “modern slavery:” America, which declared all humans equal at its founding, continues to treat black Americans like second-class citizens — particularly when it comes to policing and the prison system. Kaepernick’s tweet included a video splicing together Douglass’s speech with images from America’s slave-holding past and video of police shootings of black Americans.
But there is much daylight between Douglass’s patriotism and the anti-American radicalism of today’s left. Douglass, notwithstanding his passionate rebuke of America’s hypocrisy in 1852, was a patriot. “He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise,” he writes elsewhere in the speech.
Douglass believed in America and its founding principles; he was attacking the wickedness of slavery’s supporters, who used Scripture and the Constitution, which Douglass called a “GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT,” to defend the institution. Today’s radical left is anti-American at the core: it rejects the Founding Fathers as irredeemable racists and disrespects America’s national anthem, flag, and history. There’s a difference between saying, “America can be better” and trashing beloved symbols of American heritage.
Kaepernick’s tweet came amid leftist backlash to the July 4th fanfare in Washington, D.C, where President Donald Trump delivered his “Salute to America” address to a massive crowd at the National Mall. While thousands of patriots celebrated, leftist demonstrators agitated in the streets and burned American flags in protest of Trump, particularly his administration’s detention of illegal immigrants at the southern border.
Burning American flags and siding with illegal immigrants over American citizens — is that what Douglass had in mind?
Kaepernick’s tweet came days after the former NFL quarterback persuaded Nike to stop selling the 13-star Betsy Ross-flag themed sneaker, calling the shoes an offensive reminder of slavery. The move was widely condemned and earned a rare response from a Republican leader, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ), who ordered his state to remove all financial incentives for Nike to relocate to the state. “It is a shameful retreat for the company. American businesses should be proud of our country’s history, not abandoning it,” Ducey tweeted.
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