DENVER – When Donald Trump called former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick a "son of a bitch" for protesting institutionalized racism by kneeling during the national anthem, Kaepernick's mom Teresa had the perfect retort: "Guess that makes me a proud bitch."

That was just the beginning of the blowback. By Sunday night, almost every NFL team, and even an owner, had either knelt or linked arms during the anthem in solidarity against racism and in protest of Trump's trolling. In Detroit, the singer of the national anthem took a knee. The Seattle Seahawks, Tennessee Titans and Pittsburgh Steelers stayed in the locker room as a team for the anthem. Bruce Maxwell, a rookie catcher with the Oakland As from a military family, took a knee during the anthem on Saturday, the first MLB player to do so.

But whether or not you agree with Colin Kaepernick isn't the point. This country started as an angry protest. It started as rebellion against authority and conformity. The United States of America drew its first patriotic breath as a fist in the air and a knee on the ground.

What Kaepernick is doing embodies that most uniquely American ideal: that dissent is patriotic, and that we as citizens are called to rebel when we see a wrong that needs to be set right. It is who we are as Americans.

Colin Kaepernick isn't tearing down the flag. He honors what it stands for. As Russian dissident and chess master Garry Kasparov tweeted:

The point—the beautiful, mighty point—of US free speech rights is to protect speech the majority and/or authorities don't like. Treasure it. — Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 24, 2017

Donald Trump picked a fight with African-American athletes because he's a harebrained old bigot who enjoys inciting racial tensions and starting fights to get attention. It's not a diversionary tactic. It's who he is. It pleases his base because the country is diversifying and that frightens them. Trump didn't say a word when a white Miss Texas called him out at the Miss America pageant. But he did attack ESPN anchor Jemele Hill, NBA MVP Stephen Curry and Colin Kaepernick.

But the greatness of our Constitution supersedes the race, color or creed of those upholding its values. The First Amendment right not to say the Pledge of Allegiance or salute the flag was decided in 1943 in a religious freedom case – that began as a protest against the forced conformity of Nazi Germany. Jehovah's Witness students in the U.S. began refusing to say the pledge and salute the flag in protest of their belief against idolatry, in solidarity with Jehovah Witness believers in Germany being sent to concentration camps for their refusal to salute the Nazi flag.

In the Supreme Court's decision upholding the First Amendment in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, Justice Robert Jackson had this to say:

"The case is made difficult not because the principles of its decision are obscure, but because the flag involved is our own. Nevertheless, we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous, instead of a compulsory routine, is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.

We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

These words are as resonant for African-American athletes in 2017 as they were for Jehovah's Witness school children nearly 75 years ago. They ring clear, deep and true as bulwark against totalitarianism and a compass of who and what we are as Americans.