Our sports teams almost always have some folks from other countries.  The NFL has a few and it’s very common in baseball and soccer.

Are we to expect that they honor our country over theirs?  That doesn’t seem quite fair.

In fact, making the crowd stand before a sporting event and praise our country seems a bit North Korea at this point.  I’d vote for taking the anthem out of sporting events and taking the pledge out of schools.

Side note: flag-centric protests are certainly nothing new.  The generation in power popularized the flag-based protest during the era of the Vietnam war.  There were lots of discussions about whether you could throw someone in jail for burning or stepping on the flag.  It generated headlines and heck, know knows, it probably helped end that war.

Side side note: as I’ve said before, if you really want folks to stand for the anthem, North Korea does have a pretty effective program.