Saluting our right to disagree

Sports radio Tuesday blared with debate over national anthem etiquette, of all things.

Somebody wrote something somewhere in Detroit that it was wrong to cheer during "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Blackhawks games.

Did this guy's spaceship just land here this week?

Hawks fans have been doing this for decades. I wrote about the issue, if it can be called that, about 15 years ago.

Don't even ask me what my point was. I can't even remember how I woke up this week to this goofy new logo photo.

However, I do know what I think now about the anthem: What's the difference what anybody does during the national anthem?

This is America. We're a land of laws. If there isn't a law against raising the roof during the national anthem then there shouldn't be a problem.

Laws are definitive; etiquette is in the behavior of the beholder.

My inclination was to not address this again. I said what I had to say back in the mid-1990s, so the best thing to do was to leave it at that.

Whatever that was.

Yet listening to WSCR-AM and WMVP-AM, people kept calling in with opinions. Some were on one side of patriotism and others on the other side of patriotism.

Naturally they all considered themselves patriots.

That compelled me to figure out again which side I'm on, which may or may not be the same side I was on years ago.

Today I feel that the beauty of America is that we can disagree about anything and everything, including how to behave during the national anthem.

If you think this is an emotional topic now, imagine how emotional it was 40 or 50 years ago.

The civil rights movement still was a blazing issue. Blacks were just starting to feel comfortable demanding the equality they deserved.

At the 1968 Olympics, some black American athletes on the medal stand raised their fists during the anthem.

At college basketball games in the early 1970s, some black students refused to stand during the anthem.

At sporting events of all sorts, some teams with black athletes stayed in their locker rooms rather than cause a controversy during the anthem.

To some the protesters were unpatriotically disrespectful. To the protesters themselves, they patriotically were trying to improve this country.

Look, America is too diversified for everybody to agree on everything. Actually we're too diversified for everybody to agree on anything.

My goodness, how in the world could Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, whites, blacks, Hispanics, Indians, Asians, heterosexuals, homosexuals and transsexuals agree on anything?

Other than, that is, that this is a country in which we all can live together peacefully as opposed to places where disagreements get settled with weapons instead of words.

Men and women served in two World Wars, in Korea, in Vietnam, and are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan today, all to protect the right of Americans to disagree with each other.

They served so they could come home and join on in debates like, say, how to behave during the national anthem.

Feel free to disagree with me because that's what Americans are - free to disagree.

mimrem@dailyherald.com