Respect for Their Country Is Optional: US Athletes Will Be Allowed to Protest National Anthem at US Olympic Trials

US Olympic Committee gets woke.

Starting this year US athletes will be allowed to kneel, sit, hold a fist up, turn their back on, etc. when the National Anthem is played at the Olympic trials.

Democrats call this progress.
No longer are students or athletes expected to respect their country or its flag.

The women’s soccer team is most pleased.

And any NBA players who play for the US will be used to this by now.

MSN reported:

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee will not sanction athletes for raising their fists or kneeling during the national anthem at Olympic trials, previewing a contentious policy it expects to stick to when many of those same athletes head to Tokyo this summer.

The USOPC released a nine-page document Tuesday to offer guidance about the sort of ‘racial and social demonstrations’ that will and won’t be allowed by the hundreds who will compete in coming months for spots on the U.S. team. The document comes three months after the federation, heeding calls from its athletes, determined it would not enforce longstanding rules that ban protests at the Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee’s Rule 50 is an ongoing source of friction across the globe. Many U.S. athletes have spearheaded the call for more freedom in using their platform at the Olympics to advance social justice causes. But others, both in and outside the U.S., balk at widespread rule changes that they fear could lead to demonstrations that sully their own Olympic experiences.

The wide-ranging debate traces its most-visible roots to the ouster of U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos from the 1968 Games. Their raised fists on the medals stand in Mexico City led to the seminal snapshot of social protest in sports history.

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Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

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Thanks for sharing!