In an interview Wednesday with Yahoo Finance, Brees was asked to comment on the actions of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who in 2016 began kneeling during the national anthem to draw attention to police violence against black people in the United States.

Brees believed that his comments honored the flag and America's ideals.

It's a flag of conquest for white people, not of mercy or freedom for all.

Since George Floyd died while in the custody of Minneapolis police, and after then-police officer Derek Chauvin was seen in a video digging his knee into Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes, many people — and especially many white people — have come forward to express their respect for property or order or religion or anything other than the lives and safety of black people.

Brees wants his interpretation of the flag honored; everyone, he insists, should put their hands on their hearts before the flag to show "that we are all in this together." But some people, like Douglass, or Floyd, or Kaepernick — banned from Brees’ league for his protest — are not equals in America.

You have to say the nation is righteous before the nation will consider whether to stop murdering you.

In 1968, Adrienne Rich wrote a poem titled "The Burning of Paper Instead of Children." The poem, written partially in prose, starts with a discussion with a neighbor, who is upset that Rich's son and his son have burned a book.

"There are few things that upset me so much as the idea of burning a book," the neighbor tells her.

But Rich responds in the poem that "the burning of a book arouses no sensation in me." The end of the poem references napalm, and the people America was killing in Vietnam.

You have to say the nation is righteous before the nation will consider whether to stop murdering you.

If you have to choose between burning a book and burning a child, you burn the book.