It is the night of September 13, 1814.  The British fleet are bombarding Fort McHenry in the harbor at Baltimore, Maryland. Francis Scott Key, a 34-year old lawyer-poet, is watching the attack from the deck of a British prisoner-exchange ship. Key had gone seeking the release of a friend. They were told that they had to remain aboard the vessel until the end of the attack. When the battle was over, the following morning, Key had his telescope on the fort and saw the American flag was still waving. The sight of the tattered Stars and Stripes was so moving that he pulled a letter from his pocket and began to write the poem. This poem eventually became the national anthem of the United States – “The Star Spangled Banner”.

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight’
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

It does, sir. Regardless of a the actions of an ungrateful millionaires.

Speaking of the National Football League, Foxnews.com reports that

A defiant President Trump said Sunday afternoon that the outrage over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem “has nothing to do with race,” but rather is about “respect for our country.” 
 
Speaking on the tarmac in New Jersey before boarding Air Force One, Trump doubled down on his comments about the NFL and its players.

“This has nothing to do with race. I never said anything about race,” Trump said. “This has to do with respect for our country and respect for our flag.”

When asked if players who kneeled today should be fired as he suggested earlier, the president said, “I think the owners should do something about it. It’s very disrespectful to our flag and our country.”

Trump, however, noted that he “watched a little bit” of Sunday’s football games, and said, “there was tremendous solidarity for our flag and for our country.”

Top Trump administration officials defended the president’s comments over the weekend.

“I think what the president is saying is that the owners should have a rule that players should have to stand in respect for the national anthem,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told ABC News’ “This Week.” “This isn’t about Democrats. It’s not about Republicans. It’s not about race. It’s not about free speech. They can do free speech on their own time.”

Trump touched off a firestorm Friday night at a political rally in Alabama when he said: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a b—- off the field right now.'”

NFL owners and league Commissioner Roger Goodell were among the first to disagree with Trump’s remarks.

But by Sunday, the overwhelming response by players was of full display, with many kneeling or locking arms during the playing of the anthem. Three teams chose to stay in their locker rooms.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Marc Short, the White House director of legislative affairs, argued that players indeed have a First Amendment right to kneel, “but NFL owners also have the right to fire those players.”

And he said he didn’t think Trump had “re-opened racial wounds.”

Short also appeared to defend Trump for tweeting Saturday that he’d rescinded Golden State Warrior Stephen Curry’s invitation to a White House event honoring his team’s 2017 NBA championship, after Curry suggested a day earlier that he wouldn’t go.

“He’s the one who injected politics into the invitation to come to the White House,” Short said. “That is what the president is reacting to. The president said fine, don’t come.”

Short and Mnuchin each seemed to try to frame the issue as something larger than Trump’s views.

Short argued that high school coaches across the country are getting punished for leading their players in prayer. 

“This is about respect for the military and first-responders in the country,” Mnuchin argued.

So where does this disrespect for Old Glory come from?

It starts at the top.

Let’s go back to 9/13/11, 2 days after America solemnly remembered the 10th anniversary of the worst attack ever on American soil by Islamic Terrorists.  James Robbins wrote the following story for The Washington Times, in which he illuminated a whispered conversation between the President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, and First Lady, Michelle Obama:

The internet was buzzing this week with video of First Lady Michelle Obama apparently showing extreme disrespect to the American flag at a ceremony in honor of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. As police and firefighters fold the flag to the sound of marching bagpipers, a skeptical looking Mrs. Obama leans to her husband and appears to say, “all this just for a flag.” She then purses her lips and shakes her head slightly as Mr. Obama nods.

And, it filters to the home.

Back in the 60s, President Lyndon Johnson (whose big hand I once shook, at his ranch, as a little boy, after his presidential term) and the Democrats, brought forth a plan, called “the Great Society”. It was decided, in order to ensure that everyone would have an equal opportunity in America, that Uncle Sugar would step in to fill in the gaps.

Two seminal pieces of legislation were passed.

First, the Civil Rights Bill that JFK promised to sign, before his assassination, was passed into law. This Act banned discrimination based on race and gender in employment and ending segregation in all public facilities.

It also helped to cement in stone, minorities’ loyalty to the Democratic Party, which continues to this day.

The second bill that LBJ signed into law was the sweeping ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY ACT OF 1964. It created the Office of Economic Opportunity whose stated purpose was to attack the roots of American poverty. A Job Corps was then established to provide vocational training.

A preschool program designed to help disadvantaged students arrive at kindergarten ready to learn, named HEADSTART, was then established. Then came VOLUNTEERS IN SERVICE TO AMERICA (VISTA), which was set up as a domestic Peace Corps. Schools in impoverished American regions would now receive volunteer teaching attention. Federal funds were sent to struggling communities to attack unemployment and illiteracy.

What Johnson told Americans, as he campaigned in 1964, was that the establishment of this “Great Society” was going to eliminate the problems of America’s poor.

It had the opposite effect

The Great Society created a dependent class, which, instead of diminishing as it’s members joined the workforce, increased from generation to generation, relying on the federal government to provide their every need.

Uncle Sugar became Mother, Father, Preacher, and Doctor to generations of Americans. This “plantation mentality” continues to this day.

A few years ago, I worked at our county’s State Employment Center Office.

While at the Employment Office, I was able to observe Americans, both Black and White, down on their luck, struggling to find work and survive in this economy. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of “unemployed ” who came to this particular office were Black.

I saw Black American Families whose existence living on the Government Dole, had become generational.

It is these people whom Obama and the Democrats have hypnotized into believing that Uncle Sugar loves them, and is their only solution to surviving a stifling existence.

They are so, so wrong.

The strength and vitality of America does not come from the benevolence of a Nanny-state Federal Government.

As the greatest American President of my lifetime, Ronald Reagan said:

The nine words you never want to hear are: I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.

Being enslaved to the Government Dole steals one’s ambition. It takes away any impetus or desire to create a better life for yourself and your family, to challenge yourself to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and pursue the American Dream. It makes you reliant on a politically motivated spider’s web full of government bureaucrats who view you and your family as job security.

I watched American citizens trapped in this web of government bureaucracy, so numbed of any initiative that they once had, that they seemed offended that they actually had to prove that they inquired about three jobs that week in order to keep their “benefits”. Others seemed puzzled that they had to search through the state data base and pick out a job that they wanted to talk to an interviewer about receiving a referral to, and weren’t just simply handed a job when they walked through the door.

Instead of moving forward, by exercising the self-reliance that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached so well, these people I saw, were content on being “taken care of” by Uncle Sugar, as if being held down by their own poor, miserable circumstance, was a good thing.

I am sure that it would have offended you, Dr. King, to hear the tenants of Marxism, i.e., “sharing the wealth” and Class Envy, being “preached” to the same Black Americans whom you tried so mightily to raise up and inspire.

For the past several years, the results of LBJ’s “Great Society” have been the lead story in every television newscast, on every newspaper front page, and on every internet news/political website.

Dr King, I am sorry to tell you that racism and injustice is still going on in America. Unfortunately, it will not end any time soon, There are too many race-baiters profiting off of it.

Including, a Former President of the United States.

President Barack Hussein Obama is as responsible for what happened in Ferguson, New York, Baltimore, and what is still happening in cities like St. Louis, on college Campuses, and within football stadiums across America,  as any thug wannabe or “disenfranchised” millionaire taking an ungrateful knee.

However, he is not alone in his responsibility.

Also responsible are the black political leaders, who make their living and get their 15 minutes of fame by exacerbating racially divided situations. Their silence speaks volumes.

For example, by the Mayor of Baltimore, purposely giving carte blanche to the rioters to destroy her city by ordering the police to stand down, she, like the Roman Emperor Nero, lit the match that set her kingdom ablaze.

If Black Lives truly do matter, as Former NFL Player Burgess Owens said on Fox & Friends yesterday morning, it is the black community who are going to have to save themselves.

Let me tell you about our responsibility is, and every generation has done this throughout the history of our country, is to give our kids more hope than we had. My parents’ generation, my grandparents’ generation succeeded [in sowing hope]. That’s how they fought racism.

We have the greatest country and the most freedom today, and we have more people, particularly black Americans, who have less hope and that’s because they have very successful men telling them that they can do it but that black Americans can’t do it.

It’s really time for us to stand up as men and say: ‘Listen guys, this country gives us everything we want and if I did it, you can do it too.’ And stop the whole thing…if you wanna have demonstrations, demonstrate someplace else, but not against our flag that gives us the freedom to be the greatest people in the history of mankind.

With a nationwide illegitimate birth rate of 74%, black Americans, with help from Uncle Sugar, have succeeded in tearing apart the very thing that kept them safe and strong for decades: the Black Family Unit.

Until that Sacred Foundation, which taught individual responsibility to generations of black Americans, is restored, the violence and disrespect for others will continue.

I remember, as a 9-year-old in Memphis, Tennessee, watching my parents’ black and white television as the National Guard was called into action on the night that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

I remember after that Civil Defense Announcement that President Lyndon Johnson come on national television to make the announcement of Dr. King’s death. I remember a feeling of helplessness and of fear, as a nine-year-old, that I had not felt before.

It wasn’t just the fact that we were living in Midtown Memphis, that made me afraid.

It wasn’t just the fact of the out-of-control violence itself, that caused my consternation.

It was watching my beloved Hometown on the verge of going up in flames.

And now, 48  years later, Memphis is the #2 Most Dangerous City in America, as ranked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and has borne witness to 145 homicides so far this year, the overwhelming majority of which were black Memphians killing one another.

Words can hurt or words can heal.

A President who was supposed to bridge the Racial Divide in this nation…instead, widened it.

And, with every divisive word he and the political activists whom he championed spoke, the chasm of Racial Divisiveness, which has created a gaping hole in the fabric of American Society, grew wider.

Words mean things.

The part of Dr. King’s magnificent speech about “the content of their character” has been purposefully ignored by the professional race-baiters, assorted politicians (but, I repeat myself), and now, “disenfranchised” Millionaire professional athletes, who seek to blame the country which gives them the freedom to earn exorbitant amounts of money for playing a game while dishonoring a symbol of our nation which brave American Men and Women have fought and died for.

Dr. King, your call for self-reliance has apparently fallen on deaf ears of some of those who have the financial means to help their blighted neighborhoods and the young people roaming their streets.

So, how can we expect these young people to respect OUR FLAG, when they have no respect for THEMSELVES?

To those of you read this today, who somehow believe that dishonoring OUR FLAG, makes you more enlightened than the rest of us, and it is your “right”, okay.

However, it is my right, as the son of an American Soldier, who stepped off a perfectly good boat, in a hail of gunfire, onto Normandy Beach to protect our American Freedom, to call you out because of your disrespect of Old Glory and the sacrifices made by those who cherished our nation’s flag.

Yes, children, including the NFL Players who showed their backsides to America yesterday by dishonoring our flag and Former First Lady Michelle Obama.,,

All this for a flag.  And, for those who gave the ultimate sacrifice in its service.

Until He Comes,

KJ