"Christianity wrapped in a flag"

From a recent exchange I had on Facebook with an evangelical leader:

Thinking about the weekend from thousands of miles away—Christianity wrapped in a nation’s flag obscures the cross…

I think that fails to engage the actual issue. It's true that sports and patriotism can be a substitute for religion. But I don't think that's what's driving the backlash.

i) At a mundane level, pro football is a business enterprise. We have athletes and managers who are snubbing their customer base. That has predictable consequences.

ii) More importantly, I suspect many Americans resent the protest because they see this as yet another example of secular progressives infiltrating and co-opting every social institution. Secular progressives have a strategy of taking over every social institution, to make it a vehicle for their political agenda. We are then required to submit to their ideology. Consider how ESPN was gratuitously commandeered to propagandize for the LGBT agenda. I think this is part of fueling the backlash. 

iv) Moreover, this has become very threatening. Under the Obama administration, executive agencies were commandeered to impose a secular progressive agenda on the nation. In addition, major corporations (e.g. Facebook, Google) have allied with the gov't in steamrolling critics. That endangers the civil liberties of many Americans. There's no escape: "You will be assimilated!"

Because an issue here is human rights.

But that begs the question. Another reason many Americans resent athletes protesting the national anthem/saluting the flag is because they reject the BLM narrative as a factually false narrative. They deny that police in general discriminate against blacks. 

This is a tactic of secular progressives. They build on a false premise. At the very least, their narrative is highly contestable. For instance:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451466/police-violence-against-black-men-rare-heres-what-data-actually-say

Yet we're supposed to grant their contention as an indisputable starting-point.

Free speech is a two-way street. Protest is a two-way street. Sports fans are entitled to counterprotest. And ultimately it's the fans who pay the bills. In addition, your claim about protected speech is confused. The First Amendment prohibits gov't from punishing speech. There's no prohibition against private boycotts. Consider the boycott MLK organized against segregated bussing.

I didn't suggest the players were boycotting anything. What you're really talking about isn't free speech, but paid speech. Whether sports fans are obligated to subsidize protestors.

Once again you're not following the argument. I didn't suggest the players are paid to sing the anthem. The point, rather, is that football fans ultimately pay their salaries, and the customer base has no obligation to subsidize their protest if the customer base doesn't share their politics.