I guess he forgot he’s a movie star

Other guest was pointing out the exact opposite you dipshit

Left leaning people didn't care about that situation all that much apart from defending his right to free speech and peaceful protest, it was the republicunts who started calling for him to be fired (y'know, the people who reeeeeee about "muh freeze peach" constantly, oh the irony) and making this a big deal.

You don't have free speech when you're in a uniform that represents something bigger than you.

You cannot don your McDonalds uniform and call the cop on the other side of the counter a “pig” and tell him to fuck off without consequences.

I like how you resort to mockery to try to dehumanize your political foes. It’s very Trump if you.

@famousone- I can’t agree with that statement. When you put a symbol before a man you walk a dangerous line to totalitarian rhetoric. Police, Emergency responders and the military are all great examples. None are forced to take such dangerous jobs. None are forced to put their lives in danger or to be a symbol- but these humans, with every right to do otherwise each make a conscious choice to do so. To waive certain personal freedoms for what their uniform represents. If we force a person to that standard we defeat the whole purpose. There is not the same nobility in being forced to uphold an ideal as their is in doing so out of a sincere belief in what is right or wrong. What’s more- every person in uniform from Police to doctors to soldiers are given a moral obligation because of that uniform to stand up when they see wrong. A soldier is required to countermand an order which is unethicall, criminal, or beyond the scope of authority of the issuer. The power and symbolism given to...

.. and by a uniform which represents something bigger requires the wearer of that uniform to always uphold the symbol of what that uniform represents, or to take it off. If you are being asked to act in a way which you feel defies or undermines what your uniform represents, it is a duty to defy that order so as to preserve what that uniform means. To do otherwise is to blindly follow, and unless your uniform stands for blindly doing as you are told- that is likely a betrayal of the spirit of the very thing you are supposed to stand for.

In cases of life-or-death perhaps.
But I answer to Uncle Sam and the constitution of the United States.
These jokers play a game in someone else's name, rather than dedicating themselves to a greater cause. So they are beholden to the whims of their employers and by extension the fans, not military justice and the honor of those who came before.
The fans don't mind supporting the lawfully appointed administration, and they don't appreciate percieved disrespect to the National Anthem.
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But I'm not gonna lie, I really like it when the masses' sensibilities align with my own biases.

@famousone He used the spotlight to peacefully protest. And he was almost fired because he "disrespected" a piece of cloth and a jingle.
@pokethebear Lots of republicans including the main Republican news outlets (Fox, Breitbart...) literally called for him to be fired. How am I dehumanizing anyone by stating a fact? Mocking, sure. Because it's hypocritical of the people who claim to defend free speech to then turn around and demand someone to be fired for peaceful protest. But I'm not trying to dehumanize anyone. (Not every Republican is a republicunt, in other words. Just like not every feminist is a feminazi etc.)
Besides, why are you so triggered by mockery. It's very Sarkeesian of you.

@guest. Read my example re LEOs and McD’s. That’s the uniform similar to the NFL uniforms. Actions have consequences. This discussion had nothing to do with unlawful orders, you added that, it has to do with activities prohibited by your employer while you are at work.

@ewqua I wasn’t triggered by you. I was just having some fun pushing your buttons. I thought comparing you to 45 would trigger you, looks like it might have.
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I do stand by my uniform comment though. While I’m at work certain decorum is expected. If I tell a customer to fuck off i would be reprimanded or terminated. Hell NYS wants to punish you for things you say on social media or your google searches. They’re not even my employer.

Here's my problem with that (and I'm sure guest_ will be able to address it better than me because I'm not as eloquent): The NFL decided not to fire him. It was a decision made by the company, yada yada. But many Republicans were calling for him to be fired. Isn't meddling in private companies' affairs kind of against what Republicans are supposed to support?

And it hasn't, I just like to use people's rhetorical strategies against them

They are people, entitled to their own opinions, (however wrong they may be) much like Radcliffe. NFL weakened themselves in future negotiations and financially by not (at a minimum) issuing a fine. Whatever. What’s done is done. Millions have stopped purchasing their apparel, thousands have stopped watching altogether.

Totally fine with that. Vote with your wallet (on an individual-company level, not by bribing politicians of course). But the number of people who stopped buying merch or watching is pretty small compared to the scale of the crying that was done online and in the news. Which just makes me think there's a lot of hypocrisy and slacktivism going on among Kaepernick's critics.

@famouse one- the logic of your second argument contradicts the first. The first argument stated that when one wears a uniform that represents something bigger than them, that they do not have a right to free speech. Your second argument states that a football player uniform does not represent something bigger, but just an employee of a company that is required to tow the company line. The inclusion of the national anthem as well the the general stand of the NFL is that it is pro American and pro patriotic. They have also released many statements and ads and gone out of their way to show the NFL stands for diversity and against exploitation or subjugation of minorities. So we can say that the NFL does in fact have its own set of principals it claims to stand for- as well as a code of conduct meant to enforce the morality it stands for, and a player is supposed to represent those ideals and thus is required to challenge management if they feel management isn’t upholding those...

The NFL has a bottom line.

... principals. That’s said- in reference to your point- is it or isn’t it? Is it as you say in the forst post- that one wearing a uniform that represents something greater has no free speech, and by implication an NFL player does not because they are wearing such a uniform, or is it just another job where the uniform and organization mean nothing beyond what is asked of the employee? In reference to the logic we would apply that distinction is somewhat important.

@polethebear- that was slick how you chose to only include the unlawful part and not the unethical part. To be clear- the requirement is that an orde be unlawful, unethical, or from someone without the authority to give such an order. This is not limited to military personnel either- I used the uniformed military as an example. Civilians have a legal and constitutional duty as well to resist or refuse any order, even by law enforcement or government, which is illegal, unethical, or unauthorized. A police officer cannot order you cheat in a poker game even if such cheating were legal as it is unethical- and likely outside the scope of their authority for example. So- with that established- the private sector and governing bodies also offer protections and requirements that employees behave ethically and not blindly follow the orders of superiors. Familiar with the housing crisis and mortgage scandals? There is an example where supervisors asked subordinates to carry out what in some...

Telling somebody to stand for 55 seconds with the rest of the team while somebody sings the anthem and jets roar by overhead is not an unethical directive. You are unnecessarily muddying the waters on this discussion. There are certain behaviors your enolotwr can forbid. You waive your employment by violating the rules in the company handbook. It doesn’t matter if you make $9/hr or $8000/game. You are a representative of that employer while “on the clock” or “in uniform”.

... cases were not illegal, but were unethical orders. The consequence of those actions we know well. That is an example of why it is important to protect employees rights to refuse unethical orders or directives. As for consequences- every action has a consequence. That’s a self truism. If you refuse to participate in a genocide you might be killed. If you refuse to look the other way of your bosses harassment to others you might hurt your career or loose your job. That doesn’t mean that any consequence is by its nature just or “right,” a person you pass in traffic might follow you home and murder you- are they right simply because it was a consequence? The fact actions have consequences isn’t a justification of anything. If your daughter didn’t want to be raped by her boss she should have quit when he hit on her the first time no? We can play that game all day but it’s just a game, it has no logical weight in a discussion of rights. “Ride the front of the bus- go to jail.”

@ewqua- you shouldn’t be surprised. Crack heads don’t stop buying crack just because their dealer is a neo Nazi. People buy and use things every day that they know people literally die or are killed to make. If knowing that tiny child hands made the chips in your computer, or a factory workers life is so bad the factory had to put up suicide nets, or any of the other horrors that go into some of our favorite things doesn’t stop people- why would still watching a franchise taking away a guy’s livelihood for standing up for something that makes most people uncomfortable anyway? Ironically, in that vein we are all likely hypocrites for calling others hypocrites for doing the same thing but with other products. But life is strange and often complex, so I can’t say much.

If he didn't want to be shot in the heart by the whole platoon he shouldn't have ordered us to participate in or leave alone acts of genocide.
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If he didn't want a scandal he shouldn't have harassed his employees.
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If they didn't want to be beaten half to death and arrested they shouldn't have followed me with the intent to do harm.
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If he didn't want to be dragged to a secluded place where me and my friends would rip out his fingernails, waterboard his fucking face, force feed him his eyeballs, and cram his testicles in his eye-sockets, all while flaying him alive, then he should've left my daughter alone.
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I like this game.

It can be quite a good way to waste idle time, but as all the listed examples demonstrate- it’s not really constructive. It goes another level- where the consequences have consequences you see. At some point we trace all these consequences to the highest practical power with jurisdiction over the originating and subsequent events, and at that point, unless one can avoid or overpower that entity- their authority dictates the final consequence. In most places that entity will be a government, using rule of law, and with force to compel all parties to comply with their final arbitration. That law is almost always- as is the case of America- derived from principal and a legal framework defined around the guiding principals of said law. In the case of our discussion- the law is very clear that there is no legal compulsion for a civilian to respect or acknowledge a US flag- with president which allows for even legally burning a flag as a form of protest. On a personal note- I do not...

... support or condone the burning of the flag, however I do fee that it is important to allow it as to do otherwise defeats the purpose of that very flag. You cannot put a symbol before what that symbol represents without making a symbol meaningless. The flag, what it stands for, the men and women and others who have served and dedicated themselves to the principals that flag represents- did so for the ideals of a republic. It is far more disrespectful to them to destroy what the flag represents than to destroy the actual flag. When a man refuses to salute a flag he feels has wronged him and not lived up to its promises- we argue about the man and his dedication to that flag, but we do not stop and ask how we got to a point where men would feel this way, or how we might fix that? The spirit of patriotism of the bygone age that people like to hold up as an example of what this country has lost, was a spirit held by people who felt that their country had served them well.

They were patriotic because it was natural to be, not because ceremony demanded they be. I don’t want a person to salute the flag because they were told they had to. That is empty. I want to live in a country where people salute the flag automatically because they feel like their country has been good to them. So we as a nation and as a discussion have gone off the rails. We lost our track and started holding dogma and rhetoric above service. This country is about service- about people serving it because they know it will serve them. A whole lot of people feel like they are not being served. Naturally they might feel less inclined to serve back. We fix that- we don’t have these problems. Or we can live in an ultra nationalist distopia. We have the freedom to choose- until and unless certain people vote that away.

Ultra nationalistic dystopia? Seriously? Come on man. Off the field activism is one thing. Being obstinate while wearing your employer’s uniform is different. Even you should be able to admit that.

Any accusations of obstinance are between an employee, employer, and the law. Yet here we are discussing it, not so likely in a simple case of an employee just breaking the rules. In previous cases involving punitive actions for refusing to take the pledge of allegiance this is what the Supreme Court had to say as they upheld a persons right to abstain: “Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good, as well as by evil. … Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard. It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.” This is increasingly important in the 21st century where corporations are granted increasing leniency and gaining increasing power. Where many social services..

... and public services are being provided by corporate entities from prisons, garbage collections, telecommunications, transportation, health care, military and police enforcement, and more. As corporations become more central in the public welfare and integrated well beyond simply providing economic means and goods, but as necessary providers in all aspects of life who are as insespensible as the infrastructures they control. It is more important now than ever that we be prudent in protecting the rights of the individual. We have already seen the “hand off” be used where to skirt legal protections the government has used private entities who are not bound to offer the same protections or follow the same mandates. So I patiently reject the idea we are discussing simple work place insubordination. For it to even be insubordination we would have to establish that the NFL had the legal right to impose such a rule to begin.

Union organizers and officers are forbidden from conducting union business on the company clock. Even in liberal NY. 1A protects you from government infringement on your rights, NOT your employer. The Pledge ruling you cite is a public school ruling, public schools are generally a government entity. If a Tops Markets employee stands at the door and tells every customer that “Tops sucks and you should go to Wegmans” they would and should be fired. The NFL is not a government organization, employees do not get the same protections.

But if we are discussing breaking the rules- the players contract stipulates specifically that a player is forbidden from actions which would harm the NFL or its image- the rule at hand here that would be in danger of insobordinate behavior towards. As of C. Kaepernick’s protest- no specific rules existed requiring him to do otherwise. If we were to look at the NFL’s metrics for the period before and after the actions- we could determine if those actions did indeed harm the organization. If they cannot be shown to have a material impact (I suspect NFL profits are not doing worse than they were because of it...) then we could say wether he violated his employers rules. If he did not harm the organization in a measurable way which could be directly traced to his actions- he violated no rules we could call insubordination.

So if we are discussing an employee following the rules- we are still discussing a more important issue which is wether or not an employer can retroactively impose discipline for rules they never stated or gave notice of amongst others. More broadly- we are asking to what level is a private company allowed to impose theology on employees? We aren’t talking about a case where a professional organization wants to maintain a politically neutral stance and wants to dicipline an employee who brought politics to where there was no precedent. We are talking about an employee refusing to participate in a political activity. Can an employer fire you if they find out you’re a republican or Democrat? Can your employer require you to vote a certain way, to only buy goods from your home country? Can they require you to say you agree with congress on every choice they make, or to pray to their god or be disciplined? There is a point where your freedom as a business owner intrudes upon...

... the freedom of the employee. There is a point where a business operates in a capacity and manner in which it becomes so large and integrated that it is in essence a public entity. In the age of the mega conglomerate giving corporations the ability to essentially set their own laws as “employee rules” which curtail or violate individual rights is in essence, creating a new parallel government with a free ticket to side step the constitutional freedoms that are granted to all Americans. It is a dangerous way to think- financial might makes right. Just because- in fact ESPECIALLY because of the financial and social capital corporations can muster under current law- the question of how much “freedom” we give to private entities to enforce their own rules is a very important one that will shape our country and our world.