The Star-Spangled Banner

So, it’s super-patriot time, the Fourth of July, and everybody’s celebrating the nation’s birthday. Me, I don’t celebrate holidays, except that every year on Labor Day and Memorial Day I raise a glass to those who struggled and died for my benefit. A solemn moment, and then back to the business of living.

For the most part, holidays are a terrible inconvenience to me. Everything is closed period or closes early. Liquor stores in particular have a bad habit of closing up on holidays. Many businesses can't be bothered to open up, though; and the libraries are shut, which means no internet access for me. Plus, many holidays are an excuse for amateurs to go out drinking, a complaint I levied in an earlier post. I hate having those people around.

Thanksgiving is probably my least favorite holiday, because it’s so phony from the ground up, and always has been. I promise I’ll write a lengthy screed about that come November. Also, because I’m me, I tend to dislike any holiday with religious overtones. So Christmas and Easter are definitely out, and Thanksgiving and Halloween (speaking of non-Christian religious folks here) definitely have their share of religious posturing going on. Compared to these holidays, the Fourth is okay, I suppose. But I still have my problems with it.

I’ve never understood why we celebrate July 4th as the nation’s birthday, anyways. I mean, all that happened on the Fourth was that we proclaimed our independence. Do you know what that proclamation amounted to? Not shit. We had a war to fight, and until that was won, the Declaration was just a bit of paper. It was like a twelve-year-old telling his parents “You’re not the boss of me!” Say it all you want, kid, but Mom and Dad are still in charge.

I don’t understand why we don’t celebrate October 19th, which is when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, effectively ending the war and guaranteeing independence. How about June 21st, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify our Constitution, thereby making it the legal basis for our government? Or March 4th, when it officially went into effect? Any of these, in my opinion, would be a better choice for a national birthday.

You can stretch this argument further, of course. I’m one of those people who believe that the United States didn’t really become a nation until after the Civil War (before that we were a bunch of small, semi-independent political units; since, we’ve been one nation with the preponderance of power vested in the central government). So, why not April 9th, the date of Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, as a national birthday?

I don’t want to get into this too deeply, because really the argument can’t be won. The Fourth has become too large a part of our national consciousness now to change it, and I don’t suppose any particular purpose would be served by doing it anyway. People remember things the way they want to remember them. And I’ve got something more important I wanna argue about, anyway.

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You might have gathered from reading these posts that I tend a bit to the left of the political spectrum. I know I don’t spend a lot of time discussing politics here, but I do occasionally, and I expect my slant comes through. I don’t think I’m unreasonable, as most people (both left and right) are, but some of my views are pretty radical, given the generally conservative drift of public discourse in our country today.

The problem with being on the left when the people running the media are on the right is that you get characterized a lot by views that you don’t actually hold. This is pervasive, and I hear it all the time. I can't tell you how many people, on realizing that I'm a leftist, attribute beliefs to me that aren't mine. One of the big things I hear is that, because I opposed the war in Iraq and think the President is kinda goofy and have a lot of fondness in my heart for France and Germany, I hate my country.

Let me say right now that nothing could be further from the truth. I love my country very much. Sure, I pick on it a lot, but I pick on my family a lot, too, and no one tries to tell me I hate my mom or my siblings. The fact is, our country is an easy target sometimes. We can be silly and simple-minded and shallow, and sometimes we can be mean and spiteful, and when those times come, I think it’s irresponsible not to talk about it and try to do something about it. I don’t hate my country at all; I love it so much that I want it to be perfect, and I want to push it towards perfection. I’m not just gonna sit here and watch our great traditions destroyed, our core beliefs trampled, without saying something. That’s what loving your country really means: not silence, but speech (both critical and laudatory). Stop whispering, start shouting!

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Now, all that being said, there is one thing I really hate about my country. I hope I don’t offend too many people by saying this, but…I can’t stand “The Star Spangled Banner.” My God, what a clunker. Whose bright idea was it to make song that not one in ten Americans can sound good singing into the National Anthem? I mean, really. Even professionals routinely flub it before ballgames. It’s embarrassing. Plus, there’s no real ebb and flow to the lyrics. They just aren’t that memorable. Here’s a fun classroom activity: take an informal poll among your friends. I bet less than half can remember all the words even to the first verse, and if you can find ANYONE who knows all four verses off the top of his head, I’ll buy the both of you a drink.

If you do know all four verses, well, that’s kinda sad, but also you’ll note that there’s a problem that comes farther along in the song. The whole fourth verse is dedicated to praising "the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation." Now, given all the trouble we’ve had lately about “In God We Trust” (or, as Key puts it, "In God is our trust") and “One Nation, Under God,” and whether we can have the Ten Commandments in courthouses, this seems maybe a little too controversial to me. And don’t get me wrong; I’m a man who loves his daily dose of controversy. Still, since this is our national anthem and, presumably, is supposed to represent all of us, wouldn’t a song that didn’t reference the divine creator be a better choice? I know that Daddy Bush thinks that atheists aren’t citizens, but the Constitution doesn’t back him up on that, so I think we’ll have to have a less religious anthem for our intentionally secular society.

Finally, it isn’t even an American song. Francis Scott Key was American, born in Maryland, but he only wrote the words. The music is from an old English drinking song. Now, aside from wondering how a bunch of drunks stumbling around the London docks could manage such a difficult song, doesn’t it seem strange that the music to our National Anthem should have been written by some anonymous Englishman?

One thing you’ve got to give to our anthem is that it sure sounds grand being done by an orchestra or a martial band. But given all these other problems (unsingable melody, unmemorable lyrics, overt religious references, and lack of domestic pedigree), I figure its grandeur isn’t enough to save it. Personally, I’ve always liked “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” for your more somber occasions, but lyrically it has the same problems as “The Star-Spangled Banner.” "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord..." I don't think so. Anyway, it’s not gonna be easy to come up with an anthem that sounds good for ordinary folk to sing, but is grand enough for state occasions.

Fear not, I have a solution: have two anthems! The Nazis did, after all. Not that I’m pulling for the Nazis, you understand. But, while they kept “Deutschland Über Alles” as the “official” national anthem, they also used the “Horst Wessell Song” as an informal, or subsidiary, anthem; something to sing when they were hanging around in bars in occupied territory, getting drunk and feeling patriotic. Just because they were evil super-conservatives doesn’t mean that all their ideas were bad, and this was a good one.

For fancy occasions, our hypothetical orchestra could play Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” as good a piece of music as our nation has ever produced. Very stirring, simple and gentle but strong and phenomenally beautiful; plus it was a favorite of my Dad’s (personal note, sorry). It can be the “official” national anthem. Imagine the President walking out before a crowd of foreign dignitaries with that lonesome, noble opening trumpet line, echoing the American spirit of individuality, evoking the wide-open spaces that made us who we are…not a dry eye in the house, right?

It isn’t good enough to stand as an anthem in and of itself, though, because it has no lyrics. You can’t sing along. I don’t like to think of 30,000 people at a baseball game standing to hum the National Anthem.

So, for our ordinary, everyday, regular-folks-having-fun-and-loving-their-country National Anthem, we’ll use Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” It’s a real simple song; I’m guessing most of us learned it in elementary school. Any idiot with a larynx can sing it.

And it’s all-American. Woody Guthrie was probably our greatest songwriter, certainly on the short list. As Bum Phillips used to say of Earl Campbell, “He may not be in a class by himself, but whatever class he’s in, it don’t take long to call the roll.” Nobody’s more American than Woody; he’s a national treasure. You can’t go wrong using one of his songs for the Anthem.

And this song really is for all of us. I mean, the "Star-Spangled Banner" doesn’t say much about us as a country, does it? Outside of that whole “land of the free and home of the brave” stuff, but that’s a little bit too general for my taste. Besides, every nation probably considers itself “the home of the brave,” though they might not use those exact words; and if you think the societies we regard as totalitarian don’t delude themselves that they have freedom, you haven’t paid enough attention to foreign news agencies. Nobody’s gonna stand up and call his country “the land of the coerced and the home of the cowed.” We need something that speaks to our unique position in the political and social history of the world.

Woody describes our great nation as only someone as well-traveled as he was can do it. Oceans and mountains, fields and highways, the big sky and deserts and beaches. And he talks about ordinary folks, about people standing in line at the relief office (it’s a Depression-ear song, after all), wondering if their country still hears them, if they still belong. All of us feel that way sometimes, don’t we? Don’t we all sometimes feel a little bit lost in America? Woody isn’t afraid of that, and we shouldn’t be, either. It serves as a reminder that, while martial glory is all very nice, it isn’t all we’re about; we’re about forming a more perfect union. It's too easy to forget that.

I think it’d sound real good before ballgames and rock ‘n roll shows, a hell of a lot better than thousands of people butchering the "Star-Spangled Banner" does, anyway. These days I hit “mute” when the National Anthem comes on before a game. It would nice to have an anthem I’d feel good singing along with.