There's a temptation to dismiss the opposition to NFL players' "national anthem protests" as disingenuous or worse, particularly among obviously well-informed public figures. Put simply, the players involved—whom the president has called "sons of bitches" from the rally podium—are not protesting the anthem, or the flag, or our armed forces. They have been very clear that they are protesting racial injustice in policing and the criminal justice system. The national anthem ceremony is the venue, not the subject, of the protest, just as Rosa Parks was not protesting public transportation.

But many Americans simply have misgivings about protests during patriotic ceremonies, because they love the country and it hurts to see it criticized. Because they don't experience them first hand, they don't understand how these problems are so pressing, so morally urgent, that they have to disrupt a fun diversion from a chaotic and frightening world—perhaps the highlight of their week. If we are ever going to put this country back together again, these gaps of understanding must be bridged. And it seems we may have come upon a political figure capable of doing that in one Beto O'Rourke, candidate for United States Senate from the state of Texas.

The young Democrat was asked about the protests at a recent town hall—O'Rourke has visited each of the state's 254 counties—and he unleashed a defense of the athletes' peaceful protest that placed it in the context of a long historical struggle for civil rights in this country. He sees in it an aspect of the ideal American character: a willingness to make your voice heard in opposition to profound injustice.

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‘I can think of nothing more American.’ — Beto O'Rourke — the man taking on Ted Cruz — brilliantly explains why NFL players kneeling during the anthem is not disrespectful pic.twitter.com/bEqOAYpxEL — NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 21, 2018

O'Rourke is calm but forceful here. He is open to the idea that many disagree and that the ground they stand on does not necessarily place them beyond understanding or redemption. He gives a simple answer: "No. I don't think it's disrespectful." Then he elaborates, using history to put the present in context, and to illuminate the opposition as well as the protesters in their full humanity. But most of all, he displays a basic integrity and decency that has been drowned out of our discourse, replaced with vicious cynicism and pantomime posturing.

If ever you needed a reminder of that, you need only look to O'Rourke's opponent, Ted Cruz. The oleaginous Texas senator has long positioned himself as someone who, yeah, is a sanctimonious, grating dweeb, but only because he won't give an inch on his principles.

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Except during the 2016 campaign, Cruz called Trump a "pathological liar" and a "narcissist" and a "sniveling coward" who was unfit to be president. Trump suggested Cruz's father was involved in the JFK assassination and insulted his wife's appearance. Then, when Cruz lost out on the nomination, he folded and became a Trumpist, endorsing him and making calls on his behalf heading up to the general election day. He wrote a piece in Time praising Trump effusively. Now, he's begging the president to come down to Texas and campaign for him. Cruz is a Harvard- and Princeton-educated lawyer who regularly flirts with unhinged conspiracy theories to rile up his far-right base. He now laments a culture of division and obstruction, but he once led a government shutdown in a dead-end political stunt to repeal Obamacare and positioned himself almost exclusively as Obama's chief antagonist.

Cruz is one of the great caricatures of this shameless era, a man who's spent much of his adult life in Washington but bills himself as a firebrand outsider who will take on The System. In so many ways that matter, O'Rourke is not that. This is what he believes, and he's telling you so you can make a judgment on whether you want him to represent you in government. He knows his history, shows respect for his opponents, and most of all still harbors that naive notion that a public servant should serve the public and be honest with them while he's doing it. The choice couldn't be clearer.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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