Whether he is in desperate search for attention, naively misguided, or seeking to leverage his uncertain position as quarterback of the San Francisco professional football team, Colin Kaepernick has certainly achieved the former.  He has garnered as much attention as any superstar of the sport legitimately achieves in a lifetime.  And in so doing, his actions have focused on an essential and largely missing point in the shameful debate he has elicited: the limit of sacrifice.

It is utterly surprising how universal the feeling is in America that Kaepernick and his ilk have somehow earned the right to disparage the National Anthem in a ‘protest’ against law enforcement, or their cause de jour.  Likewise, Kaepernick’s legions of followers before and after his disgraceful and dishonorable behavior have been publically burning the American flag.  They stomp on it, and walk on the proud symbol of our freedom, and the physical image of our great Nation, like it is a doormat or worse. 

And all of these so called citizens and non-citizens do so claiming the supposed all-inclusive immunity of freedom of expression that is inevitably tied to the sacrifice of the men and women who have served our nation in the military -- many of whom have been permanently injured, disfigured, or even left behind to die anonymously in foreign prison cells. 

I know very well of the sacrifices these subversives claim were offered for their right to commit acts of public humiliation and disgrace to our great Nation -- for my wife and I are veterans.  I served my country for six years as a United States Naval Officer, and she served 14 years as an U.S. Army Officer.  And I can assure you, I also know that morally their claims are dead wrong, they do not have that freedom, and they never have, regardless of any liberal court’s findings of law.  In the moral universe, they are pariahs. Here is precisely why:

No American serviceman or servicewoman ever sacrificed anything to give anyone the right to tear down or disparage America directly or by symbology.  Indeed, in our oath, we swore to Almighty God specifically that when we arose each morning and put on the uniform of service to our nation, that we went to work every day specifically to “…support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”; that we bore true faith and allegiance to the same; and that we took that obligation freely, without any mental reservation.  Colin Kaepernick and his like-minded America-haters and America-destroyers have not earned the right to destroy and tear down our Nation using the blood and sacrifice of my brothers and sisters in arms as an excuse.  From many backgrounds and ethnicities -- White, Black, Hispanic, Arabic, Oriental, Native American -- of all creeds, both male and female, none of us ever went to war for anyone to have that ‘right’.  Indeed, we sacrificed our lives to ensure that such actions would never, ever happen in our great land.  We also swore to perpetually fight against such tyranny if it ever raised its disfigured, ugly profile on our soil.

It’s just common sense.  No one sacrifices, fights or dies to enable and empower someone else to disrespect, and thereby incrementally destroy, the way of life you sacrificed for.  But common sense is yet another victim of runaway progressivism, which seeks out every opportunity to destroy our way of life by redefinition and superimposition. 

In committing these lewd public acts of tyranny against freedom, Kaepernick has identified himself as an active enemy of this great land, against all that freedom is and stands for.  He has chosen to hide behind the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution as he commits his infamous acts of discouragement and disparagement.   When he and his kind commit these acts of hatred and disrespect for America, they have far exceeded the limit of our sacrifice, for none of us ever risked our all so that someone else could disgrace and tear down our great land and her precious people that we sacrificed so much for. 

Kaepernick and his classless kind have never had the ‘freedom’ to do what they are doing, for not a single Sailor, Soldier, Airman or Marine ever sacrificed anything to give it to them.  It never entered any service member’s mind that we sacrificed to guarantee his sickening flavor of PC anarchy.  Kaepernick has declared an illegitimate freedom, for the Constitution protects itself, just as it protects her citizens; and never does the Constitution give anyone the unalienable right to destroy it, disparage our Nation, or usurp any of our freedoms as leverage to disgrace America.  Such a sui generis interpretation of the limit of our sacrifice for our freedoms defines, in fact and in practice, the obvious, logical précis of the Constitution itself.  For once constitutionally-defined freedom is used as a leverage to destroy the very freedoms and document that engender it, then the limit of our sacrifice has been clearly surpassed.  

Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy did not stand alone on that hill in Afghanistan and willingly take bullets to save his men and our freedom so that this petulant game player could sit on his useless rear and disrespect the very national ethos that guarantees his way of life.   By his actions, Kaepernick has slipped quite beyond freedom and sacrifice, and thus stands alone and morally unprotected. No one ever sacrificed or died for him to have that right.  And those of us who took the solemn oath will never give him a pass, or lend even a single drop of valiant American blood, to his more than evident treason.

 Dennis Chamberland, PhD is an engineer, scientist, writer, and explorer.