Clinton Tweets Supports of 11-Year-Old Who Kneels During Pledge of Allegiance

During her 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton often called on young women to look to her as a role model. Now Clinton has tweeted her support of an 11-year-old who took a knee during the Pledge of Allegiance in class.

Once again, Clinton has shown her knack for grabbing the spotlight in disparaging our country.

Clinton’s tweet came in response to the actions of Mariana Taylor, a Maryland sixth-grader, who took a knee when her classroom recited the pledge.

Various groups of students across this country have chosen to remain seated due to religious and personal beliefs during the pledge for decades. What sets Taylor’s actions apart is her emulation of NFL players using the pledge as a platform to call attention to “social injustice.”

Clinton tweeted: “It takes courage to exercise your right to protest injustice, especially when you’re 11! Keep up the good work Mariana.”

So why is Clinton just now weighing in on the subject when Mariana Taylor drew national attention this past February?

Clinton, with her tweet, was aiming at far more than taking sides in a local school dispute. President Trump has waged a war of words against NFL players who kneel during the national anthem. Speaking in support of young Mariana is far more about trying to set herself apart from her political rival. Like Governor Cuomo of New York, she has no problem using disrespect for what the flag stands for if it raises her stock with her base.

When she hit the speaking circuit last October to promote her book What Happened her victim of choice then was the multi-millionaire players of the NFL. She said at that time: “And by the way, let’s be clear, those players aren’t protesting the national anthem or the flag, they’re protesting racism and injustice, and they have every right to do so.”

The conflict in question began earlier this year shortly after Mariana wrote a paper about Colin Kaepernick for an English class. She says she chose Kaepernick as the person she most admired to write about because “He stood up for what he believed in even though he could get fired. I kind of wanted to show people that what’s going on is not okay.”

After taking a knee for the third day in a row, her teacher reminded her that school board rules stated that students should stand. The teacher explained that Mariana should stand in honor of the good things in America, rather than protest about injustice.

The ACLU weighed in on the issue saying that the teacher mentioned having family overseas and that Mariana was disrespecting the country by kneeling.

The ACLU and Clinton may see a need to support Mariana, but her interpretation of the law has no statutory basis. §7–105 (c)(3) of the Maryland Code for Education, all students and teachers are required to stand and salute the flag during the Pledge. While subsection (d) of the same statute provides that students or teachers wishing to be excused from the requirement may do so, subsection (f) notes that “Any individual who commits an act of disrespect, either by word or action, is in violation of the intent of this section.”

During her testimony before the school board, Taylor referred to a 1969 landmark Supreme Court case that upheld students’ right to wear armbands protesting the Vietnam War – Tinker v. Des Moines. She failed to mention that 1988’s Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier superseded Tinker v. Des Moines when it established a standard preventing students from expression that could result in “disruption of the learning environment”.

Baltimore County schools policy states “any student or staff member who wishes to be excused from the participation in a flag salute shall be excused.”

When the controversy first flared up in February, school system officials said that taking a knee was allowed under the policy that was soon to be up for annual review.

Whether an 11-year-old has the Constitutional right to protest is not the issue, any more than it is for the NFL or Hillary Clinton. The real issue is what is the right venue for protest? For Hillary Clinton, the issue is whether she ever saw a chance to attack Donald Trump’s vision of restoring pride in this country that she didn’t take.

~ American Liberty Report


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