I pledge allegiance to her right to sit

Mari Oliver is my hero. Me and Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Abe Lincoln and so many people of consequence.

Much more consequence than, say, responsible figures at her school who harassed her because she would not recite the Pledge of Allegiance as Texas requires classes to do.

Much more consequence than the lawmakers who made it the law for her to stand and say something she didn't believe.

Theodore Roosevelt once called the questioning of authority "the first responsibility of every citizen." The high school senior did that in refusing to stand for the pledge, though slings and arrows flew.

Last week a court awarded her $90,000 for the grief she endured at Klein Oak High in Spring, Texas, when she refused to stand for the pledge.

Oliver said she refused because she doesn't believe this country guarantees "liberty and justice for all."

She also objected to "under God," as this nation isn't founded "under God." It is founded under a constitution that gives no special prerogative to believers vs. non-believers.

What the high-schooler did may make your molars ache, like Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. But as Abe Lincoln wrote, "If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it."

Texas also makes public school students recite the "Texas pledge" – 17 words including "under God." Never did that recitation make anyone more godly -- as if that ever were the state's function.

The oath says, "honor the Texas flag," something which also isn't within the state's authority. It's within Vladimir Putin's authority. It's within Kim Jung-un's authority and whichever mullah is running Iran.

The Supreme Court in 1989 ruled that the state – a case involving Texas, nonetheless -- had no say in how Americans comport themselves around the U.S. flag. The ruling protected the most unpopular protest one could make: burning the flag.

Not only did the court protect the act, it elevated the status of its protection, as it is speech in protest of the government.

Some like Donald Trump have said we should nuke that constitutional protection. The funny thing is that the "official" ceremonial means of retiring a flag is to burn it in the hands of a veterans organization. Yeah, try writing that into the Constitution.

Those who can't stand provocative statements like Kaepernick's, like Mari Oliver's, like those of Black Lives Matter, bring to mind what Frederick Douglass said about those who "profess to favor freedom yet depreciate agitation."

The whole effort to use the Constitution to scratch an authoritative itch, like banning flag burning or institutionalizing school prayer, suggests people who don't value freedom at all. They don't believe in human rights. They believe in the power of a social majority to inflict its will.

We see this increasingly in the assaults on libraries and public schools that seek to meet the needs of diverse student populations.

Those institutions are brick-and-mortar embodiments of the pluralism the founders intended.

In the recriminations faced by Mari Oliver and protesters of police brutality, we see what Harry Truman had in mind when he said, "Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures."

Kaepernick was assailed for hating his country and disrespecting our fighting forces.  Yeah, right.

We'll give the last word to one of the great warriors for civil justice and activism, author James Baldwin:

"I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

 

So, GOP, now lying is disqualifying?

The purpose here is not to defend Madison Cawthorn.

Madison Cawthorn is indefensible

With Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert and Paul Gosar, he's a member in good standing of the Congressional National Embarrassment Caucus.

The Republican from North Carolina is 26 but acts a decade younger. This tendency got him in trouble with Republican leaders when he claimed he was invited to orgies by fellow partisans in Congress. He also threw in that they did cocaine.

Later he admitted to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy this was a lie. Said untrustworthiness caused McCarthy and other key GOP leaders to denounce him.

As stated, I'm not here to defend Cawthorn. But why penalize him for lying?

We are talking of a party that has built itself around a lie, the biggest lie in American history -- religiously, devoutly, without shame.

This is a party built to the specifications of the disgraced, twice-impeached ex-president who continues to promote the Big Lie with each sunrise.

Not only does he promote the Big Lie in word, he did so in deed Jan. 6 as the Capitol was terrorized over his calculated falsehoods.

I invite anyone who takes these matters lightly to read "Betrayal" by Jonathan Karl, who covered the Trump White House for ABC News. By the way, "Betrayal" isn't Karl's term alone. It also comes from William Barr, Trump's man at Justice once upon a time, who said that Trump's comportment Jan. 6 was "a betrayal of his office and supporters."

You want to punish someone for lying? After Mike Pence told Trump a vice president had no power to reject electors, Trump issued a statement saying Pence said the opposite, that he agreed the VP had that power.

What is beyond "beyond the pale"? That is what Donald Trump did to stay in power.

No American has committed a worse offense against this nation than to (1) convince millions the election was stolen, and (2) actively seek to subvert the people's will.

Back to young Congressman Cawthorn, who, heart and soul, completely bought into the Big Lie and spoke at the Jan. 6 rally. Isn't that a sufficient merit badge to lie about something else and stay in Republican good graces?

Cawthorn even went out and claimed that the Jan. 6 riot was instigated by Antifa. Hey, GOP. This guy has worked to gain your trust.

Then there's the oddly unfortunate case of Mo Brooks. The Alabama congressman was one stand-up dude at the Jan. 6 rally, calling on MAGA faithful to "start taking down names and kicking ass."

That ought to be enough to earn him a free lifetime pass in any GOP primary.

However, recently Brooks, seeking to become Alabama's U.S. senator, made the horrifying error of implying at a rally that Republicans should put the 2020 election behind them (!!!) and focus on elections to come.

Enraged, Trump pulled his endorsement.

Come on, man. Mo Brooks was a wholly committed Big Liar. He not only put on his camo cap and did his darnedest to incite violence. He assigned some of his own staff to help organize the rally.

So, set us straight, GOP: Who among your ranks gets shunned for lying these days? Who gets a free pass – other than the greatest liar ever to flush documents down a White House toilet?

I'd like to ask rank-and-file Republicans to name one falsehood Liz Cheney has uttered since she decided that she could not remain silent in the face of Trump's corruption and the events of Jan. 6.

Cheney is dead to the Wyoming Republican Party for one reason alone: She won't lie.

So we return to the dilemma of Madison Cawthorn and the question he needs to ask of his party leaders: Since when are y'all interested in truth?

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

 

OK, Senator: Let's play, "Rate My Faithfulness"

            When it comes to courage under fire, the pithiest sayings all seem masculine. As in, "Bigger man than I," or, "That's some cajones."

            None of course apply to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

            From her forbearance amid a withering Republican offensive in her confirmation, let's just say the lady's got some ovaries.

            So brainless and insidious were some of the questions, if I were the nominee I'd have stormed out of my hearing long before, say, Lindsey Graham did.

            I'd have a major problem, confirmation-wise, in that I would have been more inclined to throw questions back at GOP senators than indulge them in their made-for-Fox News theatrics.

            If Ted Cruz, for instance, asked me, "Do you agree that babies are born racist?" I wouldn't have paused for a thoughtful answer as Brown did. I would have responded, "Not sure, Ted. At what age did your racism set in?"

            When Sen. Josh Hawley asked me if I was soft on terrorists, I would have said, "It depends, Senator. Are we talking al-Qaida or the terrorists you fist-bumped at the Capitol?"

            But what would have caused me to pick up my papers and hit the exit would have been the inanity Lindsey Graham asked of Jackson: "On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are, in terms of religion?"

            My response wouldn't be hers, which was thoughtful, personal, and – yeah, religious.

            My response would have been, "None of your business, Senator. Since when do we apply religious tests to functions of our democracy? Since never. You irk my soul."

            However, before heading to the exit, having blown up my confirmation chances but also realizing I still had the microphone, I would add:

            "Funny you should bring up religion as a criteria for high office, Senator."

            "What's your position on adultery? Where does that rank on your scale of faithfulness?

            "How many demerits would I get for bedding a porn star and then paying her hush money?

            "How many points off for going to the extent of establishing 'catch and kill' arrangements about one's sexual exploits with a national tabloid?

            "How many deductions for mocking disabled people? How about people from other nations, and calling their homelands 'shithole' countries?

            "Any points off for inflating the value of your properties to gain pricey loans, and at the same time deflating those same property values to avoid taxes and your insurance bills?

            "To what extent is basic hypocrisy a drag on one's 'scale of faithfulness'?

            "How about railing against undocumented workers while exploiting their work?

            "How about offering one's self as a voice of the working man and then stiffing contractors who work for you?

            "How about expressing almost no interest in religion most of one's adult life until it becomes politically profitable?

            "How many demerits for, in a position of extreme power, dangling military aid for a country that is on the edge of extinction for the purpose of political dirty tricks?

            "How many points off for attempting to subvert the world's oldest democracy after the voters have had their say about who shall lead them?

            "Is there any penalty at all for exhorting a crowd that turns into a mob and, though you're the only person who could stop the mob, you do nothing?

            "On a scale of one to 10, how does that all calculate?"

            Those would be my last words in my confirmation hearings for my Supreme Court nomination. Maybe Sen. Graham and I could discuss our respective faiths further in the stairwell.

            He was being slyly deferential when he said to Judge Jackson, when asking of her faith, how often she attended church, mentioning that he only managed a few church services a year.

            I know a lot of Americans who have never darkened a church door and who show more fealty to moral standards and basic decency than those who attend religiously.

            For some, Senator, religion is just show biz.

            Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.