"Fight for the Sole of America"
Oh Lord. Colin Kaepernick is at it again.
This former quarterback - who’s more famous for kneeling during the National Anthem than for his abbreviated up-and-down NFL career - just stomped his feet and declared an American flag on tennis shoes to be offensive. So Nike obediently yanked the Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July footwear from the market, lest Kaepernick be triggered by the sight of the shoes.
And I thought Kaepernick worked for Nike, not the other way around.
Fact is, this professional activist may have gone too far. He’s taken aim at Betsy Ross. The beloved Philadelphia seamstress who hand-stitched the first American flag with a commission from Gen. George Washington.
There are darn few women of the American Revolution who get any credit for their work. Betsy Ross is one of them. It’s her quaint banner with its circle of 13 five-pointed stars that’s given Kaepernick a case of the vapors.
Kaepernick reportedly told his overlords at Nike that the flag was hurtful since it harkened back to the days of slavery.
What’s next, Colin? The Liberty Bell?
This self-appointed vexillologist is trying to toss Betsy on the flaming dumpster of history. It won’t work. Children adore Betsy Ross. Shoot, I once visited her tiny Philadelphia home on a memorable school trip. According to Reuters, the Betsy Ross House still draws more than 1,000 visitors a day.
Leave the brave lady and her rustic flag alone.
Look, Kaepernick always insisted that he wasn’t protesting the flag with his kneeling, but rather police brutality. It’s now obvious that wasn’t true. His goal - and the goal of many in the alt-left movement - is to erase every patriotic symbol from the American landscape.
As a result, America’s Founding Fathers are under attack as they haven’t been since the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown.
Washington and Jefferson are favorite targets. As wealthy Virginians with large plantations, they were slaveholders. According to the New Revisionists that one fact negates all that these men accomplished: The Declaration of Independence, The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the War for Independence.
That’s insanity.
Slavery was an unspeakably cruel institution. There is no defending it. We eventually fought a war to rid our country of this repulsive, dehumanizing practice. How our Founders could have believed so passionately in liberty while owning slaves is a profound and disturbing dichotomy.
Yet we can’t allow our history be rewritten or erased because the men who founded our great republic were flawed.
Surely a simple flag that was carried by brave revolutionaries fighting to break free from a tyrannical king ought to be a treasured symbol for all Americans.
In fact, it has been. Until now.
The governor of Arizona is fighting back against this latest bit of far-left whackery. When Doug Ducey beheld the gutless refusal of Nike execs to tell Kaepernick to knock it off, he cancelled financial incentives that had been earmarked for a new Nike plant in Phoenix.
“Instead of celebrating American history the week of our nation’s independence, Nike has apparently decided that Betsy Ross is unworthy, and has bowed to the current onslaught of political correctness and historical revisionism,” Ducey said. “Nike has made its decision, and now we’re making ours. I’ve ordered the Arizona Commerce Authority to withdraw all financial incentive dollars under their discretion that the State was providing for the company to locate here.”
He said the state’s economy would be “fine” without Nike.
I’ve written before that I didn’t like boycotts. I still don’t. That said, I find the governor’s stand against historical revisionism refreshing. Especially on the eve of Independence Day.
Note: The headline on this piece is not original. The phrase was coined last September by David Moon of the Knoxville News.
