San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was not pleased by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticizing his “ridiculous” protest of the national anthem.
Ginsburg, a darling of the left, unleashed shockwaves in the news when she called Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem “dumb” in an interview with Yahoo! News.
“I think it’s dumb and disrespectful,” Ginsburg said. “I would have the same answer if you asked me about flag burning. I think it’s a terrible thing to do, but I wouldn’t lock a person up for doing it. I would point out how ridiculous it seems to me to do such an act.”
When pressed by Katie Couric if Kaepernick had the right to conduct his protest, Ginsburg replied: “Yes. If they want to be stupid, there’s no law that should be preventive. If they want to be arrogant, there’s no law that prevents them from that. What I would do is strongly take issue with the point of view that they are expressing when they do that.”
Kaepernick, naturally, was asked about Ginsburg’s comments and told the San Jose Mercury News that they were “disappointing.”
“It is disappointing to hear a Supreme Court justice call a protest against injustices and oppression ‘stupid, dumb’ in reference to players doing that,” Kaepernick said. “I was reading an article and it refers to white critique of black protests and how they try to de-legitimize it by calling it ‘idiotic, dumb, stupid,’ things of that nature, so they can sidestep the real issue. As I was reading that I saw more and more truth how this has been approached by people in power, and white people in power in particular.”
The quarterback later remarked that “the flag is just a piece of cloth and I am not going to value a piece of cloth over people’s lives.”
Ginsburg eventually recanted her criticism on Kaepernick in a statement, saying that her “comments were inappropriately dismissive and harsh.”
“I should have declined to respond,” she said.
The left must have gotten to Ginsburg, as they can tolerate dissent among their own even less than dissent among the right. But perhaps Ginsburg’s leftism can only be ideologically consistent by supporting Kaepernick’s protest, since his actions reflect the leftist belief that “the American story isn’t one of restoration of founding principles and allegiance to eternal truths, but an ever-changing moral rubric in which the only constant is the evil of the past,” as Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro put it.
Kaepernick will make his first start of the season Sunday against the Buffalo Bills.