With all the attention and controversy on sports athletes kneeling when the national anthem is played, I want to share my reasons for kneeling.

First, the words from the Pledge of Allegiance: “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

The national anthem pays homage to this pledge and the nation’s flag, asking if the flag still waves over the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I can’t speak for all who kneel, but for African-Americans, this country has never been the land of the free. There has never been liberty and justice for all. The white men who penned the U.S. Constitution wrote in its very first article that my black ancestors were only 3/5ths of a person. From those very words, they divided this nation by race.

We have fought a war over that division and the recent presidential election shows that the division is still alive and well. We elected a man whose political career was launched by saying loud and long that the first elected black president wasn’t even a citizen.

I pray that we are not a nation under God, because I do not believe God would want us to be divided like this. I do not believe that God likes how blacks and other minorities have been treated in this nation, where systematic racism has been the rule since Day One.

I am a disabled veteran. I have served and bled for this nation that I love. As a commissioned officer, I took an oath to defend the Constitution “against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.”

What does it mean to be a domestic enemy of the Constitution? It does not mean waving the flag, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, or standing when the national anthem is played. It means criticizing those who exercise their rights given to them by the Constitution.

I am not saying that anyone has to agree or support those who kneel; in fact, it is a constitutional right to disagree. But when people label others as unpatriotic or un-American, they are a domestic enemy of the Constitution. Not un-American, not unpatriotic, but a domestic enemy of the Constitution, nonetheless.

There is no right or wrong place to exercise a person’s constitutional rights. The Supreme Court ruled that people even have the right to burn the flag in protest. This nation was founded on protest.

Taking a knee does not mean those who are protesting don’t love their country. To to contrary, they love it so much that they want it to live up to the principles that the pledge and the anthem aspire to — true liberty and justice for all

It is true that all lives matter, but all lives won’t truly matter until Black Lives Matter

John Spruill Jr. is a former commissioned officer in the. U.S. Army, having served as the commander of a drill sergeant unit. He also served on the Auburn City Council and School Committee. He has lived in the Lewiston/Auburn area for more than 35 years.

John Spruill Jr.