Two weeks ago, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick provoked a wave of controversy following his decision to sit down for the national anthem during a pregame ceremony. He later told NFL Media that he was protesting racial injustices in the legal system and didn’t want to stand up for a country that allows these injustices to continue, prompting a nationwide backlash and the very real possibility of losing his job and/or his sponsors. Patriotic traditions like the national anthem are held almost sacred in American culture, and failure to participate in these customs is considered disrespectful towards our veterans that have fought for our freedom and our nation as a whole. Although Kaepernick could have expressed his discontent in a more respectful manner, the public outcry against the NFL player's actions far exceeds the gravity of his wrongdoing. The Santa Clara Police Union has threatened to boycott 49ers games for as long as Kaepernick continues his protests, and the conservative American Family Association (AFA) claims that Kaepernick also broke federal law by refusing to stand, citing 36 U.S. Code § 301, which states that all present should stand hand over heart for the Star Spangled Banner. Responses like these have worried me about the way our society handles patriotism. Could you imagine what it would be like to spend a night in jail for sitting during the national anthem? Anyone would be shocked if these kinds of laws were in place, but a great amount of people want Kaepernick to face legal consequences for his actions. Patriotism is good and noble at heart, but infringing on someone’s right to peacefully protest on the basis of being “un-American” not only violates the First Amendment, it also threatens the integrity of the democratic society our founding fathers envisioned.

David Niose, writing for Psychology Today, talks about how American patriotism “is undeniably linked to “us-against-them” tribal impulses, rooted in emotion and often impervious to reason. It feeds nationalism and militarism, making it a potentially dangerous phenomenon in a world of modern weaponry.” I have lived in a military town for my entire life, so I’ve always been exposed to this kind of mentality. When it comes to discussions involving the war in Afghanistan, I usually hear the argument that the Afghan people “hate our freedom and prosperity and want to take it away from us”. There’s no doubt that there are terrorists in Middle Eastern countries that want to sabotage our country, but there are also millions of Afghan, Iraqi, Syrian and Pakistani civilians that want nothing more than safety and freedom from oppression. Patriotism is what has caused our country to brutally retaliate against the Middle East in retaliation for the 9/11 disaster. It has caused us to ignore the fact that 210,000 Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani civilians were killed by the wars as of March 2015, with the death toll still rising. The wars in the Middle East have killed 70 civilians for every person that died in 9/11. I am not diminishing the horrible tragedy that happened that day by any means, but I was taught that all human lives are equal, and there is no reason to believe that an American life is any more valuable than an Iraqi or Afghan life.

Despite all of this, I’m not against patriotism at all. I think it’s great to love your country and support it in good times and bad. However, I believe that it needs to be reformed. When an individual’s love for his/her country influences him/her to show contempt for people that don’t share the same values, patriotism loses its original meaning. To be good patriots, we also need to accept that people of different nations are bound to feel just as patriotic about their own countries. They deserve the same respect that we do when we talk about what makes our country great. We also need to realize that freedom of speech and expression is a keystone of American values. Rather than branding Colin Kaepernick as “un-American” and disrespectful to veterans, we should find relief in the fact that we have the liberty to choose whether or not we stand during the national anthem. It may not have been politically correct, but he has the right to sit down if he wants to, and by allowing Kaepernick to express his political opinions in a peaceful manner, we are doing our patriotic duty as free citizens of the United States.