Oriole VP John Angelos’ Eloquent Support of the Constitution

Richard E. Vatz

I have read the Oriole Vice President’s well-thought-out, contemplative criticism of President Trump’s attack on Colin Kaepernick’s on-field protest of the national anthem.

There are few instances in my life wherein independently the source of a position is so persuasive that I only secondarily look at that which is said, but this is surely the exemplar that engenders my reaction.

The only analogues I can conjure up are Winston Churchill, Maggie Thatcher and Abraham Lincoln.

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When Peter Angelos’ son is so rightfully scandalized by President Trump’s attack on the right of the eminent Constitutional scholar Kaepernick to symbolically represent his carefully researched political opinions on the gridiron, I can only say “Thank you, Mr. Angelos.”

The precision of his criticism, quoted in the SUN, castigating the president in saying, “In nearly 25 years as a sports executive and a lifetime spent as an American citizen I have never been so appalled by the abusive blood lust of my country’s highest governmental office to defile my country’s constitutional guarantees and selectively attack and demonize my country’s people based on their exercise of our constitutional free speech rights,” won me over instantly.

I know there are those who would irrationally argue that the issue is loyalty to one’s employers and customers, and that the First Amendment only protects one from the government, but that is picky, picky, picky.

That is why I told the owner of Bubula’s Tavern that he must not fire his server who picketed the tavern with signs saying “Bubula’s Tavern Sucks!”; that was the server’s constitutional right.

Churchill, Thatcher, Lincoln and fils Angelos: Democracy’s Preeminent Quartet.

Professor Vatz teaches political rhetoric at Towson University