Football players are taking a knee today to protest the way Trump calls one of their own a “son of a bitch” for protesting.

And I’m very sad that some of my friends apparently think these protests are unAmerican. “Love it or leave it!” they scream.

Protesting is one of the things that we can do in America. It’s so American, it’s guaranteed to us in the very first Amendment.

Disagreeing with the point of the protest — that’s fine. That’s your right under that same 1st Amendment. But saying they shouldn’t protest at all (or they should protest somewhere else, where we can’t see it and where it has no affect)? Why do you hate America so?

Look, I disagreed completely with the Charlottesville protesters, but I never said they should not have the right to do so.

These protests make people mad. But protests are supposed to make you upset and uncomfortable. They’re meaningless otherwise.

The whole point of a protest is to make people uncomfortable and to make them think. People complained when blacks sat at the white lunch counters, too or when Americans dressed as Indians and threw tea in the harbor.

Also, I can’t help but notice that these very same people didn’t say a word about nazis protesting in Charlottesville. “Very fine people,” according to Trump.