Why do they hate this great nation?
Why do they strive, not just to "fundamentally transform" it, but to end it??
Seems the very center of Liberalism is to find every wound and apply salt......how often must we hear of the evils of slavery, with hardly a word about the cathartic Civil War, and the monumental efforts Americans have made to amend same?
American history.....to be proud of:
September 13th, 1814 British begin 25 hour bombardment of Fort McHenry, Baltimore, but fail to take fort. A giant 15-stripe flag stitched together by Mary Young Pickersgill waved over the fort. By 1818 the third version of the flag, with 13 stripes, was created. Frances Scott Key wrote Star Spangled Banner honoring the 15-stripe version.(See 3/3) The British Navy had used “mortar vessels,” the mortar placed on the forecastle of an anchored boat, capable of blasting a 196-pound explosive shell four thousand yards in a thirty-second, high-arcing flight. Thus “bombs bursting in air.”
Why would Liberals attack these symbols of America.....such as this from a Liberal historian at a major Ivy League university:
1 "Is It Time to Ditch the Star-Spangled Banner?
2. The Star-Spangled Banner, so often a prelude to our ceremonies for others, finds itself on center stage this weekend as Baltimore, the city of its birth, celebrates the national anthem’s bicentennial.
3. Two hundred years ago, a Maryland-born lawyer, Francis Scott Key, poured out his anxious feelings for the fate of his country. Having witnessed the shelling of Fort McHenry by British forces throughout the night of Sept. 13-14, 1814, Key was elated to see the American flag still flying the next morning.He wrote out four stanzas of a poem titled “Defence of Fort M’Henry,”....
4. ... 18th-century London, where the music was actually composed. Indeed, the invading army that shelled Baltimore that night has nearly as much claim to authorship as the composer, for the tune was likely brought to America by British soldiers at the time of the American Revolution. It has been testing our vocal chords and our eardrums ever since.
5. Indeed, from its murky origins, the song has become so ubiquitous that it’s difficult not to hear it... Its martial strains launch every sporting contest, adding a kind of athletic drama of its own, ....Each performance forces us to relive Key’s emotional trauma ... a kind of musical bombardment that endlessly perpetuates Key’s agony of waiting and watching.
6.... the third stanza is troubling. One line taunts the British for their failure, and specifically calls out “the hireling and slave” who joined the British forces.
7. A deeper study of Key only compounds the problem. .... his position on slavery is impossible to avoid. Key was not only a slave-owner, but he zealously defended the peculiar institution in his legal work, persecuting local journalists who questioned slavery, and even those who possessed anti-slavery writings in their homes.
a. His brother-in-law was Roger Taney, who became chief justice of the Supreme Court and authored the infamous Dred Scott decision, which argued that African-Americans could never be citizens of the United States. Indeed, much of what we know about how Key wrote out “The Star-Spangled Banner” comes from an account Taney published in 1857, the year of Dred Scott.
8. .... the “Star-Spangled Banner” gained currency as the Navy began to play it more officially in the 1890s, in the same decade that the Navy was spearheading the spread of American influence around the world. Its use accelerated in World War I, ...
9. .... is it time to rethink the Star-Spangled Banner?.... the story of Key’s nearness to slavery cannot easily be forgotten, especially in an era that demands more accountability, and offers to tools to find it. Critics over the years—I am hardly the first—have been brutal about the Star-Spangled Banner’s many shortcomings.
a. The New York Herald Tribune dismissed it as “words that nobody can remember [set] to a tune that nobody can sing.” In 1918, a woman named Kitty Cheatham denounced the words as “German propaganda” (because they undermined the Anglo-American alliance), and saw the music as a product of “darkness,” “degeneracy,” and “the carnal mind.” .... the columnist Michael Kinsley has ripped its “empty bravado” and “mindless nonsense about rockets and bombs.”
10. It would take a gigantic effort to remove the “Star-Spangled Banner” from its throne—a throne that becomes a little more entrenched this weekend. But to ask hard questions about entrenched power is an American tradition even older than our attempts to sing this enduringly difficult national song."
Is It Time to Ditch the Star-Spangled Banner - Ted Widmer - POLITICO Magazine
What's next.....the flag itself?
Why do they strive, not just to "fundamentally transform" it, but to end it??
Seems the very center of Liberalism is to find every wound and apply salt......how often must we hear of the evils of slavery, with hardly a word about the cathartic Civil War, and the monumental efforts Americans have made to amend same?
American history.....to be proud of:
September 13th, 1814 British begin 25 hour bombardment of Fort McHenry, Baltimore, but fail to take fort. A giant 15-stripe flag stitched together by Mary Young Pickersgill waved over the fort. By 1818 the third version of the flag, with 13 stripes, was created. Frances Scott Key wrote Star Spangled Banner honoring the 15-stripe version.(See 3/3) The British Navy had used “mortar vessels,” the mortar placed on the forecastle of an anchored boat, capable of blasting a 196-pound explosive shell four thousand yards in a thirty-second, high-arcing flight. Thus “bombs bursting in air.”
Why would Liberals attack these symbols of America.....such as this from a Liberal historian at a major Ivy League university:
1 "Is It Time to Ditch the Star-Spangled Banner?
2. The Star-Spangled Banner, so often a prelude to our ceremonies for others, finds itself on center stage this weekend as Baltimore, the city of its birth, celebrates the national anthem’s bicentennial.
3. Two hundred years ago, a Maryland-born lawyer, Francis Scott Key, poured out his anxious feelings for the fate of his country. Having witnessed the shelling of Fort McHenry by British forces throughout the night of Sept. 13-14, 1814, Key was elated to see the American flag still flying the next morning.He wrote out four stanzas of a poem titled “Defence of Fort M’Henry,”....
4. ... 18th-century London, where the music was actually composed. Indeed, the invading army that shelled Baltimore that night has nearly as much claim to authorship as the composer, for the tune was likely brought to America by British soldiers at the time of the American Revolution. It has been testing our vocal chords and our eardrums ever since.
5. Indeed, from its murky origins, the song has become so ubiquitous that it’s difficult not to hear it... Its martial strains launch every sporting contest, adding a kind of athletic drama of its own, ....Each performance forces us to relive Key’s emotional trauma ... a kind of musical bombardment that endlessly perpetuates Key’s agony of waiting and watching.
6.... the third stanza is troubling. One line taunts the British for their failure, and specifically calls out “the hireling and slave” who joined the British forces.
7. A deeper study of Key only compounds the problem. .... his position on slavery is impossible to avoid. Key was not only a slave-owner, but he zealously defended the peculiar institution in his legal work, persecuting local journalists who questioned slavery, and even those who possessed anti-slavery writings in their homes.
a. His brother-in-law was Roger Taney, who became chief justice of the Supreme Court and authored the infamous Dred Scott decision, which argued that African-Americans could never be citizens of the United States. Indeed, much of what we know about how Key wrote out “The Star-Spangled Banner” comes from an account Taney published in 1857, the year of Dred Scott.
8. .... the “Star-Spangled Banner” gained currency as the Navy began to play it more officially in the 1890s, in the same decade that the Navy was spearheading the spread of American influence around the world. Its use accelerated in World War I, ...
9. .... is it time to rethink the Star-Spangled Banner?.... the story of Key’s nearness to slavery cannot easily be forgotten, especially in an era that demands more accountability, and offers to tools to find it. Critics over the years—I am hardly the first—have been brutal about the Star-Spangled Banner’s many shortcomings.
a. The New York Herald Tribune dismissed it as “words that nobody can remember [set] to a tune that nobody can sing.” In 1918, a woman named Kitty Cheatham denounced the words as “German propaganda” (because they undermined the Anglo-American alliance), and saw the music as a product of “darkness,” “degeneracy,” and “the carnal mind.” .... the columnist Michael Kinsley has ripped its “empty bravado” and “mindless nonsense about rockets and bombs.”
10. It would take a gigantic effort to remove the “Star-Spangled Banner” from its throne—a throne that becomes a little more entrenched this weekend. But to ask hard questions about entrenched power is an American tradition even older than our attempts to sing this enduringly difficult national song."
Is It Time to Ditch the Star-Spangled Banner - Ted Widmer - POLITICO Magazine
What's next.....the flag itself?
