I'm certainly no historian, but I believe the national anthem personifies the original sacrifice of our founding families so that we could obtain nationhood. It recognizes what was necessary in the past in order to get to a point where we can envision a better future. Nobody wants to go back to bombs bursting in air, but without that reminder we would forget what it took to secure the freedoms we have today. It's not the identity of who we are as citizens (that would be the Declaration of Independence), but what was necessary to become citizens in the first place.
I like how you're talking about various subjects that have a reoccurring theme of home. It gets readers thinking about the broader scope of belonging and what that means 👍
What an evocative essay! There are tradeoffs with any of these options for the American anthem, because conquest is inevitably tethered to each of them. I rather like the straightforwardness of the Star Spangled Banner. It captures, more than America the Beautiful, the bloody history that has defined our country, and not just during the Revolutionary War. I had a student write an essay once on American greatness (I had asked, around the 2016 election, Is America Great?). Her first half began, "America is not great. America has never been great." That half was a litany of genocide, slavery, and abuses against women. The second half began, "America is great. America has always been great." That half chronicled the efforts, since the country's inception, of reformers to work toward a more perfect and just union. I don't hear that complexity in America the Beautiful? I especially cringe at the juxtaposition of those lyrics against Mount Rushmore, which is a national disgrace: arrogance literally hacked into the Sioux's sacred homeland. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/rushmore-sioux/
I'm certainly no historian, but I believe the national anthem personifies the original sacrifice of our founding families so that we could obtain nationhood. It recognizes what was necessary in the past in order to get to a point where we can envision a better future. Nobody wants to go back to bombs bursting in air, but without that reminder we would forget what it took to secure the freedoms we have today. It's not the identity of who we are as citizens (that would be the Declaration of Independence), but what was necessary to become citizens in the first place.
I like how you're talking about various subjects that have a reoccurring theme of home. It gets readers thinking about the broader scope of belonging and what that means 👍
We sang two verses, first and last, of the Star Spangled Banner every day at the school I attended.
What an evocative essay! There are tradeoffs with any of these options for the American anthem, because conquest is inevitably tethered to each of them. I rather like the straightforwardness of the Star Spangled Banner. It captures, more than America the Beautiful, the bloody history that has defined our country, and not just during the Revolutionary War. I had a student write an essay once on American greatness (I had asked, around the 2016 election, Is America Great?). Her first half began, "America is not great. America has never been great." That half was a litany of genocide, slavery, and abuses against women. The second half began, "America is great. America has always been great." That half chronicled the efforts, since the country's inception, of reformers to work toward a more perfect and just union. I don't hear that complexity in America the Beautiful? I especially cringe at the juxtaposition of those lyrics against Mount Rushmore, which is a national disgrace: arrogance literally hacked into the Sioux's sacred homeland. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/rushmore-sioux/