KNEELING DURING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM IS NOT UNPATRIOTIC

By Juan Montoya

A few years ago I was visiting with friends in a southwest rural Minnesota community.

It was the Fourth of July and with everything closed, my friend and I walked over to the local Veterans of Foreign Wars hall to shoot the bull with the local vets and quaff a few.

They were friendly enough and we were getting along just fine when the bartender in the well remarked loudly that his sister had joined a group that left in a bus to Minneapolis-St. Paul to protest George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Although he wasn't himself a veteran, he thought he would ingratiate himself with the customers, by criticizing his sister and those in the protest group as being unpatriotic.

"It's a shame," he continued, "that those bums are out there screaming on the street while our troops are in Iraq," he said plaintively. "I told her I didn't agree with what she was doing."
As he looked around for what he though would be unanimous agreement, a vet spoke up from the far end of the well.

"Good for her," said the vet who I later learned had served in combat in Korea and then Vietnam. "A lot of people went to war and fought and died so that your sister can enjoy the freedoms guaranteed to all Americans. We went to fight overseas so that your sister could exercise her right to protest. We don't have to agree with her."

This, I feel, is the mature eyes-wide-open patriotism that we have to exercise as we walk in a free country.

The first settlers came to this country fleeing religious prosecution. That is, they left because their way of worshipping their God did not sit well with traditional philosophies of mainstream English society.

So it stands to reason that when the Declaration of independence was penned and approved by the Continental Congress, there was no state religion included in the document. In fact, when the U.S. Constitution was approved by delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the convention's president George Washington voiced a prayer thanking not a god or a celestial power, but rather, a Creator.

In the Bill of Rights attached to the Constitution as a requisite for all the colonies to agree to sign on to the it, the now-famous words that delineate the curbs on the government over individual rights still reign supreme in our country.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

But there is also a mirror image to these rights. One could very well read that an individual is not only free to speak, but also not to; to worship or not worship as he sees fit; to exercise his right to assemble, or not; and to pledge loyalty, or not, to the government short of trying to overthrow it.

In fact, in this last respect, the Declaration of Independence clearly reserves that right to "the people."
The Second Amendment, for example, has long been an object of controversy because it states that "a well- regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

This, to gun-rights groups, means that Americans have a right to bear arms. Conversely, it also give people the people the right not to bear arms if they don't want to.

The case involving children of Jehovah's Witnesses not pledging allegiance to the flag is but one example of the Constitution protecting differing viewpoints.

In that case, children of this sect were being forced to pledge allegiance to the flag when their religion taught them that "thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the children and declared that they, or anyone, should not to be forced to pledge allegiance to anything.

In fact, our country has grown so diverse that to an orphan immigrant from Africa (Asia, Mexico, Vietnam, etc.), the term "Motherhood and apple pie" would be meaningless.

The veteran from Minnesota was right.

Many people have worked and sacrificed themselves to make this country what it is. Don't belittle their memory by limiting the rights of others who may be, think, or look different than you.