"Please stand for the playing of the National Anthem." It is a command. It is a statement. It is reverence. It is more than just patriotism. When we stand for the playing of our great anthem we devote a few minutes to the remembrance of what our country stands for.

It sickens me to see on the news of a young man who, rather than stand with his fellow Americans, chose to sit down bringing no attention to what was happening. Rather than talking about this individual, the reason for standing up for the national anthem has been seen as a Freedom of Speech question.

Do we have the freedom to not bring reverence to our nation?

Well, that seems to be the most misunderstood question. I guess one could pretty much do what they wanted. Rather than standing, you could text on your phone, run around the room, do jumping jacks, start cursing everyone for standing up, awkwardly leave the room or even sit down without having respect.

However, what you cannot do in any manner is go up to the flag, tear it down, step upon it, and expect everyone to still be standing aimlessly. No, I am sure you would find some type of disagreement or experience a black eye the next morning.

The point I am making is that when we stand up for the playing of the national anthem it is not necessarily the song or the flag that we are standing up presenting reverence.

Protected in the National Archives is a very old document that to an unknown tourist looks like the Dead Sea scrolls. The US Constitution is a revolutionary concept, an invention created from the minds of normal people, not kings or queens.

When a soldier takes a commission, he or she states that they will defend the Constitution, not the flag. When the president takes office, he or she states that they will defend the Constitution.

As citizens, we would be stupid to not stand up for a flag that represents freedoms that we take for granted every single second of our day. If one were to visit another country such as China or North Korea, they would find that the freedoms that America has promised to protect through all forms of legislations are not there.

We all know about the Great Wall of China, but have you heard of the Great Firewall of China. The firewall issued by the Communist government of China is designed to censor all forms of media that is deemed threatening to their totalitarian government.

This includes Facebook, Twitter, whitehouse.gov, Wikipedia and any web page that would state the truth. In America, you can search anything without restraint or constraint. That is what a group of Americans wanted about 200 years ago.

Nowadays in order to prevent offending anyone a person issuing a prayer has to say, “Bow your heads if you so choose.” Now it is going to be “please stand for the national anthem, if you so choose.”

No one should ask you to stand, you should know as soon as you hear the National Anthem that you stand up. I remember attending UNG’s Starlight Concert last August. What originally is a Fourth of July celebration was moved to a celebration for the New Year. Towards the start of the fireworks, the background music was playing patriotic songs about America.

Then it happened.

The National Anthem was played and it started with a few people standing up. There was no flag in sight, but we knew what the song meant. By the end of the song, everyone was standing.

Our national anthem is a question: “Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light?” The Anthem is a poem about whether you can still see our nation’s flag still standing in the background of chaos and failure. My only statement for the young gentleman who decided to sit in protest, “Do you still see that flag?” because I am pretty sure if we did not defeat Nazi Germany or the Empire of Japan that we would be seeing a different flag.

If you want to protest about something sitting down for the national anthem is not the time nor the place to do this. Rather head to the US Capital as is your devoted right as an American citizen and protest. Despite all the chaos our country has seen from police killings to terrorist attacks on American soil, our flag has never been removed, never been tattered, never been lowered so the enemy can raise theirs.

That is why we stand for the national anthem. It is because thousands have died for your right to say “I can still see that flag.”