Once again, I want to try to unpack where I really stand.
My view of free speech isn't Right or Left to my mind. I do find myself criticizing the Left more often at that moment; so, I can see how people could see that as an indication that I'm a conservative.
That said, anybody who has known me for a while knows that I defended Colin Kaepernick. Before the pandemic, I was taking my nephew to a restaurant to watch the Buffalo Bills games; at one point, back when LeSean McCoy was still playing for us, he was shown stretching during the National Anthem and some of the fans were absolutely irate. I didn't even notice or care that he was stretching during the Anthem until people started screaming at the screen. Of course, I've also been critical of Trump for saying that flag burning should result in a loss of citizenship and for his musings about the state filtering the news media.
Alex Nowrasteh referred to this as "Patriotic Correctness" as an opposite to politicial correctness. I think Alex was correct in this characterization. The thing is, right now, I don't see patriotic correctness as an equal threat as political correctness.
First of all, if you see the case of Kaepernick (allegedly) losing his job for offending conservatives rather than just not being that great of a QB and don't have a conniption about a professor being fired for wearing a Nazi uniform at a Hogan's Heroes themed party forty years ago, that's your problem.
That said, of course I would oppose Kaepernick being fired for his demonstrations. I've regularly supported him. That said, even if Kaepernick did get fired for being patriotically incorrect, the impact of that hardly ruined his life. He's still swimming in Nike money. He was offered a chance to play in the AAF and turned it down because they wouldn't pay him several millions of dollars while every other player in the league was getting $80 thousand. LeSean McCoy clearly didn't lose his job for sitting out the Anthem. If anything, kneeling during the Anthem has become fairly normal. Trump used plenty of patriotically correct rhetoric; but, he did nothing to try to move that forward.
In the mean time, the NFL and the NBA have started social justice campaigns wherein players could wear certain names or messages on their helmets or jerseys; but, of course, that needs to be league approved. It's perfectly fine to wear George Floyd's name; but, players can't wear Tony Timpa's name despite him being murdered by police in the same way. Some NBA players wanted to wear pro Hong Kong messages and were denied that right. That's political correctness, not patriotic correctness.
The victims of political correctness don't tend to be people who go to sleep at night on piles of money no matter what they say. Mike Adams killed himself because he dared to be politically incorrect and was forced out of his teaching career. August Ames killed herself because she said that she wouldn't perform porn scenes with men who had done gay scenes and she was harassed passed the point of being able to handle it. I couldn't be happier that Keziah Daum, as a high school graduate, had the mental strength to endure the national shaming over her wearing a Chinese dress to prom which was even perpetuated by major media networks.
Both patriotic and political correctness are evils that we need to solve; but, right now, political correctness is the evil that's killing us and currently winning the culture war.