If you were a high school history teacher
and you wanted to teach your class about the First Amendment,
you know, what it allows you to do, what it doesn't,
especially in the wake of the national anthem protests
started by Colin Kaepernick,
how would you do it?
Because if there's one thing we've learned since the protests began,
it's that people really have no idea what the First Amendment means
or, for that matter, patriotism.
It's not unpatriotic not to stand for the national anthem.
It's almost funny how Kaepernick's critics claim that he should have to stand up for the national anthem
because people died to give him that right.
The same right that he's exercising
by kneeling instead.
Those critics don't seem to have any respect for the people
who want our country to be better.
So, they're willing to do whatever it takes to draw attention to its flaws
in the hopes that we can fix them as a country.
That to me is patriotic
far more than people who think patriotism amounts to nothing more than obedience and ritual.
So, in North Carolina, recently,
a high school teacher by the name of Lee Francis
taught this lesson on the First Amendment
by invoking the case of Texas v. Johnson. It's a Supreme Court case from 1989
where the court ultimately banned this idea of punishing people
who desecrated the American flag.
Before that ruling
you could theoretically be punished for
burning the flag or ripping it up.
It was basically considered a sacred symbol.
And then, to show students what the Supreme Court now allows you to do,
that teacher desecrated a flag.
Specifically, he stepped on one 3 times.
Now, a couple of students, who didn't understand the point of this whole lesson,
they were upset. They walked out of class afterwards and they told the principal what happened.
But they really did miss the point here.
I mean, if they didn't like what their teacher did,
that's fine.
They're allowed to complain about it, but their discomfort is not a reason
to ban desecration of the flag.
As the ACLU said later,
the freedoms and principles that the flag represents
include the right to step on it.
The administration of that high school, unfortunately,
didn't see things the same way,
they put that teacher on paid administrative leave for a little while
Then they suspended him for 10 days without pay.
So how's that for a lesson, kids?
The First Amendment only protects popular speech.
If someone makes you feel uncomfortable,
they'll have to be punished.
What a horrible takeaway.
Now, let me add a caveat here.
The First Amendment doesn't mean you can do anything.
I mean, you can't yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
And public school teachers, especially,
are limited in what they can do.
I mean, it's not like your teacher can preach to you in the middle of math class.
What this teacher did wasn't dangerous and it wasn't advocacy.
It's not like he was telling the kids they should all go step on flags.
He was merely demonstrating the fact that some people take symbols so seriously
that they will go after people who don't.
And, hey, guess what. That is exactly what happened to him.
I remember a few years ago there was a similar story of a college professor
who asked students to write the word "Jesus"
on a piece of paper and then step on it.
Most of them, he predicted,
wouldn't do it,
they would hesitate, or they would refuse.
And that's because that word
has so much symbolic power.
We see this type of thinking everywhere.
I'm sure a lot of Christians would feel really horrible
about ripping a page out of the Bible.
Even if there are, you know, millions of Bibles out there and this one isn't special,
and there's no like commandment against it,
they would just feel like they're doing something dirty.
The same thing applies to me, too. I mean, you can give me five copies of a picture of my baby
and I would feel really weird about ripping one of them up.
I feel bad deleting a blurry picture of my baby from my phone.
But that's the power of symbolism
and we have to get over it.
There is a difference between a symbol
and the ideas it's meant to convey.
Let's talk about the ideas, let's debate those ideas.
Let's not spend so much time worrying about the symbol or the ritual.
By the way, that college professor,
he got in trouble for what he did, you know,
trying to do his job and get the kids to think critically.
And this is an issue a lot of atheists ought to care about
because we spend a lot of time arguing against symbols.
We're told to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and not all of us do it.
Some of us want to stay seated during the pledge because
we don't want to say that we belong to a nation under God,
or we don't believe these words that say we are
one nation with liberty and justice for all.
You know, we're told to salute the flag
to honor a country where
African-Americans have to live in fear of getting shot by the police and
Hispanic Americans may see their hard-working family members get deported,
and LGBT people have to fight to get equal rights.
That's not justice.
All I'm saying is
I understand why some people may not want to pretend like the United States is the greatest country in the world at all times.
There's room for improvement.
Students don't have to agree with that high school teacher
or approve of what he did,
but the fact that so many people are making a big deal over nothing,
is the exact point he was trying to make.
After all,
what makes you more patriotic?
Exercising the rights that people have died to get you,
or bowing down to symbols of freedom, no matter what?
The school district chose the second option
and they were wrong.
My name is Hemant Mehta and I write at FriendlyAtheist.com
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