Despite Supreme Court Ruling, Washington Post Continues to Attack Washington Redskins Team Name

Despite the recent ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court reiterating that the Washington Redskins have a right to trademark their team name, the Washington Post continues to attack the team for its “offensive” name.

In a recent editorial, the paper again called the NFL team’s name a “racial slur” and demanded that owner Daniel Snyder change the team’s name:

Mr. Snyder can call his football team anything he wants without fear of losing the valuable trademark protection that is key to merchandising revenue. But just because the First Amendment gives him the right to use a racial slur, that doesn’t mean he should. Why would he even want to? We understand the affection Mr. Snyder and some team fans espouse for the history embodied in the name, and we have never thought there is racist intent when fans hail the team’s name.

The paper, of course, is spouting a mere opinion that “Redskins” is a “racial slur.” It is an opinion not shared by everyone and a position that should not be stated as fact the way the paper did.

But the paper continued making its position even more explicit:

None of that, though, changes the inescapable fact that the name is one that no one with any real sense of decency would ever think to call a Native American to his or her face. It is degrading. It does real harm, particularly in psychological damage to Native American children and teens. It should be changed—and then congratulations will be in order.

“Fact” is not a legitimate word. Many people are not offended by the name at all.

Indeed, even as it supported the Post’s anti-Redskins position, NBC Sports’ ProFootballTalk noted that the paper’s own recent survey doesn’t support its definitive proclamations that the team’s name is “racist” or offensive.

The recent survey found that only a tiny 10 percent of Native Americans were offended by the team name.

On one issue, these anti-Redskins extremists are right: The same First Amendment that allows the NFL team to maintain its 60-year-old team name allows them to advocate for the team to dump the name.

That’s fine. Advocate away.

But where the left is wrong is in trying to get government to force the team to dump their name, and that is where the left is anti-American in its basic ideology. Freedom is great when they want to exercise it themselves, but when it comes to things liberals don’t like they believe government should step in and quash the rights of any who oppose them. This is what the left has been trying to do for years, by trying to force the local and federal governments alike to outlaw the team’s name.

And now, not even a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court is stopping them from their attempts to remove Daniel Snyder’s First Amendment rights.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.