America was founded by people who refused to kneel or bow to anything but God. I would have thought that point had already been made by our American history.
We didn’t kneel to the British during the American Revolution, we did just the opposite. We defeated them and their tyranny and created our own new country. We certainly didn’t kneel to Hitler and his evil spread of Nazism, we did just the opposite. We defeated him and crushed the Nazi menace, freeing the world. And, during the extended Cold War period, we didn’t kneel to the spread of communism by the Soviet Union, we did the opposite. We economically and militarily broke that country. America has also thwarted and rebuffed many other instances of tyranny and oppression worldwide too numerous to list here. Likewise, we are not now kneeling to the insanity occurring in the country today as the result of a false narrative of “systemic racism” and “white guilt.”
Originally, we were told that the kneeling in sports venues across the country was “in protest of racial injustice.” (Please recall how former NFL quarterback, Tim Tebow, was harshly criticized for kneeling in prayer, while Colin Kaepernick is widely praised). However, we are now well past demonstrations protesting the death of George Floyd and calling for police reforms. That early effort was replaced by the rioting and destruction we witness daily—a mob-driven force whose threatening demands include defunding police, eliminating law and order, and undermining the legal and political framework of our society—enabling this chaos and anarchy.
Antifa and Black Lives Matter are engaged in domestic terrorism. This conduct has been embraced and enabled by a national Democrat Party that calls them “peaceful protestors.” BLM has proudly admitted “we are trained Marxists.” BLM is headed by people who seek to tear down our form of government and free-market economy and replace it with some form of socialism, which is almost always a precursor of communism. One of its leaders stated in past months that, “if America doesn’t give us what we want, we will burn down this system.”
We have watched athletes, entertainers, corporations, and others be cowed, quickly fold, and grovel when attacked by BLM/Antifa and the national media for their perceived failure to adequately “apologize” for racial injustice and white “privilege.” We have also watched regular, hard-working Americans lose their jobs merely because they voiced a dissenting opinion or did not immediately offer sufficient self-loathing and public contrition for America’s “sins.” It is timely to recall the words of Frederick Douglass: “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down,” Douglass said in a speech in Boston in 1860.
They demand we kneel; to genuflect—a solemn gesture that for centuries has been used to demonstrate faith in and worship of Almighty God—in order to appease these American terrorists. No. Not now. Not ever. This is tyranny. This suppression of speech is what a dictatorship looks like. Americans don’t bow and kneel to tyrants. We do the opposite. We defeat them.
Royal Alexander is a Shreveport attorney.