I have long had mixed feelings about songs that celebrate my country, and so here I offer alternate lyrics to USA’s national anthem. Although still quite rough, I could wait no longer; I wanted to share it now, on USA’s Independence Day.
Here’s the thing: The songs I know are all laud and glory, yet over USA’s gestation and lifetime, there have most certainly been numerous cases in which our collective behavior has been abominable. When I try to sing the laud and glory, echoes of the past haunt me, along with the continuing pain, ugliness, and scars. And so it hurts when I sing.
On the other hand, I cannot stand with many USA citizens that I’ve heard express pure disdain for our country. The world is, to my observation, undeniably better in many ways because of USA’s existence — even if the world might have been even better yet had our collective behavior had been better. While others stand silent, I must sing a song of the USA even if it hurts.
And I long for a full song. A song with that tells the hard parts and the glorious parts. A song that looks in the mirror. A song that, by both praising USA’s goodness and acknowledging USA’s sins, gathers all the people and points forward toward healing, building together, and making room for everyone. A song of corporate responsibility for both the past and the future.
Perhaps every country could sing its mix of glories and sins. And the sins are the roughest verses to sing. In USA’s specific case, an inadequate list of major failings would include: enslavement of (mostly) those of African origin with violence and many related ills,
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removal and assimilation of First Americans and many treaty violations and ills that preceded and followed, internment of Asian-Americans, heartless capitalism with greed and corruption, violence against people of non-traditional life situations, suppression of people in majority life situations, suppression of political ideas, attempts to achieve political aims by fiat or force or subterfuge rather than legislation, abuse of government office (from all sides). Most of these have been perpetrated with official support from one or more levels of government in the USA.
But USA has also created major good things in the world, a quick and short list of which includes: sparking and sustaining the world’s imagination for new levels of personal freedom and self-government (within community), fostering world-transformative business and technological innovation, massively raising standards of living throughout much of the world (laudable when through compassionate capitalism or at least neutral capitalism), contributing hugely to defeats of tyranny and oppression, championing freedom of life and conscience throughout the world.
These lists are not complete and they are insufficiently nuanced. But they represent a substantial amount of (what I believe to be) an approximation of undeniable reality. On balance, my conclusion is that USA has been a net positive for the world.
And so I offer a different song, hoping we might turn before it’s too late.
