OK, folks, please square this one for me.

You have fun for years laughing at “liberal snowflakes,” who retreat to their “safe space” for milk and cookies when confronted with opinions they dislike. In fact, you’ve cheered when universities invite “controversial” speakers like Milo Yiannopolis, despite the fact that many students find his opinions not just offensive, but dangerous.

You thought it was an outrage when Google fired James Damore for circulating a memo to fellow employees that denigrated the emotional and intellectual abilities of women.

You are angry when protestors want to take down statues of those who actually fought against the United States in defense of an indefensible system.

Yet, when mostly African-American athletes quietly kneel during the national anthem in order to protest more than 400 years of racial oppression, including ongoing police abuse, you find that expression intolerable, worthy of presidential condemnation and a firing offense.

I say this as a veteran and the son and grandson of veterans. If I didn’t see combat, I have friends and relatives who did. People I knew gave their lives in defense of this country. For all its flaws, I love America, and have always respected the flag. Yet, the flag is not an idol to be worshiped. It a symbol of the values we hold. And one of the most important of those is the right to dissent.

It is easy for those of us, comfortably protected by our privilege, to suggest that those protesting should find another way to do so. Yet, consider the issue from their point of view. From 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 African slaves ashore at Jamestown, until the slave trade was abolished in 1807, nearly 600,000 slaves were forcibly brought to this country. At the start of the Civil War, roughly 89 percent of all blacks in America, almost 4 million people, were slaves. Overall, between the arrival of those first black slaves at Jamestown and 1865, when the 13th Amendment officially outlawed slavery, millions of Africans and their descendants were held in bondage and servitude in the United States. They were routinely murdered, raped, beaten, and deprived of the most basic human rights. That represents an indelible stain on this country’s soul.

The oppression of African Americans hardly ended with the abolition of slavery. On paper, of course, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments promised equality. In reality, however, the end of slavery marked the beginning of a century of legally enforced second-class citizenship. In fact, while the worst aspects of Jim Crow were outlawed by various civil rights laws in the 1960s, the treatment of African-Americans has remained unequal.

Even if overt discrimination has greatly diminished today, the consequences of past discrimination are still with us. You cannot have a race in which one runner is loaded down with weights and chains for half the race, remove them, and suggest that from then on it is a fair contest.

Nor should we forget that, from abuses in the criminal-justice system to continued discrimination in employment, housing, and education, full equality remains more aspiration than reality. As a white man, with all the privilege that implies, I can’t even begin to imagine the toll that constant exposure to racism, from minor slights to full-blown discrimination, must take on its victims.

Yes, we have come a long way. Despite our ongoing racial problems, thing really are better than they were. Yet, much of the change that we now celebrate came about precisely because some people protested. Many, at the time, thought those protests were bad for the country, impatient, disrespectful, or unjustified. Aren’t we better off today, because those protestors spoke out?

This is not Anti-fa. This is not violent. This is not disrupting anything or taking away from anyone else’s rights. Protestors are silently kneeling. I may wish they weren’t, but I’m certainly not being harmed.

Perhaps instead of wrapping ourselves up in the latest episode of the culture wars, we should take this opportunity to reflect on what we can do to make our country a more perfect union, with more liberty and justice for all. That would be a terrific way to honor our country and our flag.