With liberty and justice for all
Is kneeling during the playing of the national anthem unpatriotic? I served my country, and honor those with whom I served and those who have fallen in service of our country. I also acknowledge those who have fallen at the hands of a police officer during a traffic stop. It is not an either/or proposition. Love of country for me includes looking critically at things that need to be changed.
Making a public statement about injustice by kneeling during the national anthem is also honorable, sincere and patriotic, and does not denigrate those who served and who died. It broadens the picture of what has and continues to be sacrificed, and what needs to be changed.
Those of us who served in the military did so for the American ideals of liberty and justice. We did it for all American citizens, echoing what we pledged as part of our upbringing.
"Patriotism means unqualified and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them ... We ought to get used to the idea that no people is eternally great or eternally noble ... that the greatness of a people is to be sought not in the blare of trumpets ... but in the level of its inner development, in its breadth of soul."(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, From Under the Rubble, Repentance and Self-Limitation in the Life of Nations, p. 120-1)