Kaepernick isn't the worst

But the more important question is the second: Is America worth celebrating because of what we stand for?

Traditional conservatives would certainly say yes: America stands for foundational notions of individual liberty and equal rights under God. Failure to live up to those ideas represents a breach of trust with our most basic ideals. Racism isn’t an ingrained character flaw in the American psyche, in this view — it’s a betrayal of what America represents. This aspirational belief is what created modern America: it drove hundreds of thousands of Americans to spill their blood to free their black brethren; it drove millions to vote to stop Jim Crow; it drives millions to condemn racism, making “racist” the most effective and powerful slur in American life.

The modern Left pretends to mirror this belief system — Hillary Clinton tried it out for a spin during the Democratic National Convention, when she attempted to usurp Republicans’ traditional “love of country” theme in a flag-waving display of charlatanry. But in reality, American leftism is based on rejection of America’s founding principles. America, in the Howard Zinn view, was conceived in class warfare and founded in racism; every step away from the founding, therefore, is a step forward.

In this view, the national anthem would be celebrating a foundational lie: the lie of the Declaration of Independence, the lie of the Constitution. Standing for that lie would be downright immoral. If, as columnist Shaun King puts it, America was never great, why stand for the song celebrating it? If the flag is a symbol of oppression and racism, as Louis Farrakhan says, why cheer it? The American flag flew over a country that tolerated slavery for longer than the Confederate flag — so why stand for it?