Paying respect at sporting events? Should or should you not?

I believe that the problem is we are no longer teaching our youth today that by paying respect to our Flag or by saying out loud the Pledge of Allegiance  we are simply paying respect to what they stand for and for what hundreds of thousands of Americans have fought and died to preserve.  The teenagers and young adults today look at their actions as a way of defiance against government and that comes from a lack of education on their part.  Next time you see young kids sitting through the American Anthem, as hard as it is to do, educate them.  Explain that we are celebrating the very rights that they are, without even knowing it, exercising.  Not standing, or just as bad, standing yet talking through the National Anthem is simply showing your ignorance as to what this great country is all about.  Yes I am damn proud to be an American.

I know this is going to sound cheesy as hell but let me quote a line from American President  

 "America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free"

The key sentence in the above quote is "celebrate that in your classrooms"...Government has taken it out of our classrooms - big government always creates more trouble.

Their parents don't so respect either and have never taught them right. Also this is America you don't have to. Myself as an American, an a Veteran find it down right outrageous. Some kids now a days aren't raised to respect anything not even themselves, how to you expect them to respect anything. Times are changing for the worse not the better.