I read with
interest this morning, a report
on the AOL news page stating that the NFL has announced that players won’t be
barred from taking a knee during the national anthem. When I say, “with interest,” I am referring
not to the NFL’s decision with respect to kneeling, which I didn’t find
particularly surprising given the way the NFL has been managed. No, what interested me were the blurbs of
rhetoric that came from the interviews with Commissioner Roger Goodell and some
of the players following the league’s autumn meeting.
“The NFL won’t stop its players from
kneeling during the national anthem,” said Goodell. “Instead, he said, the league wants to help
them in their political activism….”
“We spent today talking about the
issues that our players have been trying to bring attention to. About issues in
our communities to make our communities better,” Goodell told reporters.
Pay
attention to the sleight of hand taking place here, because the cooption of
individual speech rights often takes place as if it’s part of a magic
trick. Notice how the distinction
between players who took a knee in protest during the game and all of the rest
of the players has been quietly erased. Suddenly
the protest belongs to all of the players in the NFL, regardless of whether
they agree or not.
I for one
find it fascinating – and by “fascinating” I mean deeply disturbing – that what
many (incorrectly) hailed as an issue of free speech for the kneeling players
is now morphing into the cooption of free speech rights of all of the players. All of
the players are social justice warriors now, whether they like it or not. But as I’ve argued before (see “Losing
the Power of ME”), this is what liberals do, and it’s how they’ve become so
powerful, so it behooves us to pay careful attention to the experts in action.
One has to
wonder if, when NFL players joined the players’ association, it was with the
understanding that the spokespersons for the association would presume to speak
for them on issues such as “social justice.” Do the players who stood during the national
anthem with their hands over their hearts agree that we’re a racist country
where black people are systematically oppressed? Hmmmm.
Regardless of whether they agree or not, this is what’s implied when the
players’ association presumes to speak with one voice on this issue. No one wants to be the one to raise his hand
and say, “I disagree” or “I don’t want to adjudicate this on the football
field.” So the squeaky wheels win once
again.
But please don’t let the trees distract
you from seeing the forest. This post is
NOT about the NFL. It’s NOT about the
protests. It’s about the right of every
individual to preserve the power to speak for oneself. It’s about defending the sacred right not to
have our unique, individual voices coopted by those that we either have some
real or imagined association with. That,
and only that, is what this post is about.
If free
speech is power, then there is great power in being able to claim that you
speak for others. This fact has not been
lost on many of those who want to drive an agenda. As I relayed in “Losing the Power of ME,” this is a tactic in which the Left
excels. Liberals are notorious for infiltrating
groups and associations organized ostensibly for one purpose and taking control
of both the agenda and power of that organization’s voice (and by default, the
voice of its membership). Just think of
the AARP, the NAACP,
the American
Medical Association, the
American Bar Association, and just about every labor union that exists. The leaders of these groups use their power
as spokespeople to influence policy that reaches far and wide, and they do so
by usurping the voices of the conservatives silenced within. And
though it’s a favorite tool of the Left, some on the Right are guilty as well.
Power is a zero sum game. When your voice is coopted by others, that is
power stolen from you, and your own voice is easily lost in the crowd.
This is a
particularly timely subject in light of the onslaught of pundits these days who
are presuming to speak for “the voters,” as if we are all of one like mind in a
politically tumultuous time when we clearly are not, as evidenced by Garnet92’s
enlightening post from earlier today: “Here
Are The Five Types Of Trump Voters.”
The post details a survey of 8,000 voters which found that “there is
no such thing as one type of Trump voter.”
In spite of this reality, I turn on the news shows each day to see a familiar
pattern wherein one pundit or another is declaring that “the voters” want this
or “the voters” want that, in what I see as attempts to create the impression
of support for their own versions of an agenda that’s still being tweaked. If a pundit has evidence that he or she does
indeed speak for the will of the voters, then by all means they should make
their case; but the powers that be have a duty, in my humble opinion, to verify
the truth of their claims, and not to assume that my inability to be heard over
the pundits is a sign of my agreement.
Life is hard enough without my having to combat the claims of every
shill who claims to speak for me.
The prospect
of our stolen voices underscores the importance of by-laws and constitutions,
and of the need for strict enforcement of them.
Such documents typically spell out the limits of the power of those in
charge such that they don’t have the flexibility to be unduly influenced by
those wishing to illegitimately harness the power of its members, as is
occurring in the NFL and elsewhere.
Uphold the Constitution. Isn’t
this what it always comes down to in the end?
~CW
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