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“Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.”
- Robert Kennedy
“But what happens when the heartfelt views, right or wrong, are in conflict with the popular opinion of our constituents?” he said. “What happens when the devotion to our love of country and oath and value depart from the momentary passion of a large number of people back home? Those are the times that try our souls. Real political courage doesn’t come from disagreeing with our opponents but from disagreeing with our friends, and with our own party."
- Adam Shiff
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Of course, the anthem has been a battleground for dissent, too. "For this to be, indeed, the land of the free and the home of the brave," Dr. Harry Edwards says, "we would have to have arrived at that state of perfection that does not at this point exist."...The anthem, he says, always has been a powerful platform for protest. "The national anthem is about America," Edwards says. "It is symbolic of that aspiration for e pluribus unum — one out of the many. So the anthem becomes a forum to demonstrate against the contradictions to those professed aspirations."
How Sports Met 'The Star Spangled Banner." NPR.