Memorial Day: A Perfect Time for an Update on the Culture War

Over the past nearly one quarter of a millennium, millions of brave men and women have died serving their country in an effort to preserve freedom at home and abroad.  In order to encourage the American public to reflect on the sacrifices made by the Armed Forces, the Federal government has set aside the last Monday in May as “Memorial Day” since 1971, when the “Uniform Monday Holiday Act” first took effect.  For the previous century, Americans celebrated Memorial Day, originally known as “Decoration Day” on May 30.  In its earliest days, Americans would celebrate Memorial Day by decorating the graves of fallen soldiers. 

For years, the American public held a consensus that the American flag and military personnel deserved an enormous amount of respect.  Americans of all political persuasions and backgrounds could unite around the American flag as a symbol of national unity and pride.  A half a century after the culture war first began taking America by storm, those days have come and gone. 

 

I have assembled some headlines based on recent developments in the culture war, most of which do not provoke a sense of optimism in the fight to restore traditionalism:

 

New NFL Policy Hopes to Crack Down on Anthem Protests

 

More than a year after former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the National Anthem to protest police brutality, The National Football League has decided to crack down on players who decide to follow in Kaepernick’s footsteps.  Kaepernick also wore socks depicting police officers as pigs. 

President Trump weighed in on kneeling football players at a rally in Alabama, where he unsuccessfully tried to get the crowd to back incumbent appointed Senator Luther Strange over insurgent candidate Roy Moore.  He asked them, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say ‘Get that son of a b***h off the field right now?’” While the media likes to point to the “dictatorial” tendencies of President Trump as the reason for the new NFL policy, outrage from the fans might have more to do with it; after all, the primary purpose of the NFL, a private organization, is to please its audience, not engage in political posturing. 

In response to President Trump’s remarks in Alabama, a lot more football players decided to take a knee in an effort to show solidarity with the protesters as the #takeaknee trended on Twitter.  As Newton’s third law points out, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  In response to the kneeling phenomenon, many came up with a hashtag of their own.  The #BoycottNFL movement really took off, with many football fans posting videos of themselves burning their NFL gear and NFL season tickets.  In turn, the #BoycottNFL movement also targeted the sponsors of the NFL, including Papa John’s; which ultimately decided to abandon its role as the “official pizza sponsor” of the NFL.  

The new policy requires that all players who choose to assemble on the field during the National Anthem stand but allows those wishing to protest the Anthem to remain in the locker room.  NFL players can still technically kneel for the Anthem but their team owner will have to pay a fine.    

President Trump, who has served as a far more effective culture warrior than many people predicted, reacted to the new policy during an interview with Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade: “You have to stand proudly for the National Anthem or you shouldn’t be playing. You shouldn’t be there. Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country. You have to stand proudly for the National Anthem.”

The media went absolutely nuts over that statement, with MSNBC guest and Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude comparing the President to a dictator during an appearance on “Morning Joe”: “He sounds a lot like Erdogan right there, doesn’t he? He doesn’t sound like the leader of the free world.”  For the record, President Trump did not use the power of government to force the NFL to make this decision, they made it on their own.     

As her panel trashed President Trump as a racist and a “bully,” MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle begrudgingly pointed out that the idea of showing respect for the flag by standing for the National Anthem appeals “not just to President Trump’s core base but to a broader audience.”  In fact, a poll conducted by Remington Research Group shows that 64 percent of Americans agree that NFL players should “stand and be respectful during the National Anthem” while only 25 percent of Americans disagree with that statement.  Those who support standing for the Anthem might seem slightly outnumbered because those who disagree with that statement find themselves well-represented in the Democratic Party and the media.          

 

PC Goes PC

 

Those hoping to attend a Catholic college in Rhode Island have two options: Providence College or Salve Regina University, located in Newport.  Sadly, many Catholic colleges have become “Catholic in Name Only.”  It looks like Providence College has unfortunately earned that title after the School’s Vice President for Student Affairs, Kristine Goodwin, obtained a restraining order against recent graduate Michael Smalanskas because of his support for the 2000-year-old definition of marriage.  Goodwin had previously encouraged students to participate in a “march against homophobia” in response to a bulletin board Smalanskas posted defending traditional marriage.  If Goodwin really hates the Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage that much, you would think that she would look at applying to work at a public or non-Catholic university.

The drama continued when Smalanskas and his fiancée attended a Senior Formal at Foxwoods, where a fellow student threatened to stab him.  Smalanskas then confronted Goodwin at the Commencement Mass, telling her “you should be ashamed of yourself. They threatened to rape and murder me and you did nothing.”  Goodwin considered that statement, in addition to a 5-10 second glare he directed at her as a “threat.” In other words, Goodwin filed a restraining order against Smalanskas because of a perceived threat he made in response to her inadequate response to deal with an actual threat. 

The drama at PC begs the question why do so many people hostile to the teachings of the Catholic Church choose to attend Catholic colleges?  Unfortunately, it looks like the “long march through the institutions” that forever altered Academia has not exempted Catholic schools. 

 

The Death of the Old West Continues

 

On Friday, slightly less than two-thirds of Irish voters voted in favor of a Thirty-Sixth Amendment to Ireland’s Constitution.  The Thirty-Sixth Amendment would repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which bans abortion.  The vote in favor of passing the Eighth Amendment took place in 1983; the results of that referendum serve as a mirror image of Friday’s vote, with 66.9 percent of voters voting in favor it and the remainder voting against it.  This vote comes just three years after a slightly smaller majority of voters in the predominantly Catholic country voted to legalize same-sex marriage. The fact that a majority of the Irish identify as Catholic ultimately means nothing; the church attendance rate better explains the results of these recent referendums, which demonstrate a profound spiritual famine.  It looks like Ireland has unfortunately decided to make the Church of Liberalism its official religion.  As Ann Coulter pointed out in Godless: The Church of Liberalism, abortion enjoys a status as “the holiest sacrament” in the Church of Liberalism.    

 

Creeping Fascism in England

 

As the Judeo-Christian values that have long formed the backbone of western culture continue to lose influence in Ireland, another time-honored western principle, free speech, finds itself in peril in the United Kingdom, where Judge Denise Marson has sentenced activist Tommy Robinson to thirteen months in prison for “breaching the peace” and has banned the media in the country from reporting on it. 

At the time of his arrest, Robinson was livestreaming outside of Leeds Crown Court as child grooming trials, with primarily Muslim defendants, took place inside the courtroom.  Other media outlets had already reported the information Robinson shared with his viewers in the video.  These outlets had to scrub all references to the child grooming case in order to comply with the judge’s order. For all the talk about the totalitarian tendencies of President Trump, doesn’t this action sound a lot more totalitarian?  After all, dictatorships use the force of government to ban the media from covering certain stories.  Covering a certain story that did not reflect well on the religions of Islam, diversity, and multiculturalism has become quite a taboo in the “crazy progressive SJW hellhole” that England has become.     

The arrest of Robinson comes not long after UK officials banned Lauren Southern from entering the country because of some “racist” posters she posted in the town of Luton and detained Brittany Pettibone and Martin Sellner as they sought to visit Robinson.  As someone not familiar with the Church of England, it seems like “Thou Shalt Not Criticize Islam” has become one of their commandments.     

A man who had thrown bacon at a mosque ended up dying in prison and many fear Robinson will face the same fate, as British prisons now have enormous Muslim populations.  According to Robinson’s lawyer, “he will likely die in jail given his profile and previous credible threats, and the judge basically said he doesn’t care.”

 

In conclusion, many threats to freedom still exist a century and a half after the creation of Memorial Day.  While many of these threats come in the form of hostile outside actors especially radical Islamic terrorists, many who seek to subvert freedom come in the form of unelected bureaucrats and increasingly totalitarian, politically correct governments within the borders of western countries.

While Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer in Contemporary America, keep in mind the original intent of the holiday and take a moment to remember all those who sacrificed their lives in order to preserve the freedoms that we still enjoy, for now.