My Country
‘Tis of Thee,
Sweet Land of Liberty,
Of Thee I Sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride
From ev’ry mountainside
Let freedom ring
These graceful lyrics, penned by Samuel Francis Smith, to a melody borrowed from the UK’s rousing, “God Save the Queen,” served as one of our de facto national anthems, along with “Hail, Columbia” and “God Bless America,” before “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially adopted as our national anthem in 1931.
We used to sing these anthems in grammar school when I was a kid, in the years after WWII. The thought which always produced a transport of emotion in this kid was “pride” in one’s country. Today, among so many in what has become a nation of mutts – mixed salads, if you prefer – chests do not swell at thoughts of the “Land that I love,” or our “Gem of the ocean.” It’s obvious that if there is any pride among our people nowadays, what produces it is very different from in the past. It’s more like, well, we don’t really love America, we love her benefits. To many on the Left, it’s sort of like Land that I don’t love, I won’t stand beside her, or guide her, through the night with a light from a Bud. To some on the Right, the anthem runs a bit like Glen Frey’s
“I’ve got mine,
Don’t want a thing to change,
‘Cause I've got mine.”
It’s a mess. And it ain’t gettin’ any better.
Lack of pride?
A lack of pride in one’s self, one’s family and one’s community is like a barbed-wire fence which keeps the growing underclass enslaved by their street culture and scheming leaders. Lack of pride suffocates the fires of self-determination. Allows self-serving dunderheads to tell you how to live, what to eat, drink, wear, how much of this or that you can use, how to vote, and worst of all, how to think. How can anyone who has no positive accomplishments of his own feel pride in his country? He has been taught that his nation is the reason he has not succeeded. This dreadful way of thinking leads to total dependence on the government to provide whatever it takes to keep the undersheep going. Just enough to keep it going. Never enough to allow it to break free from the shackles of an ever-growing government. Can anyone feel proud in a culture like this? Ask those who survived life in the totalitarian USSR.
So, out of this milieu comes a very different candidate for president of the United States. One who senses this lack of pride; in the joblessness of blue collar America, the hopelessness of inner city America, the ineptitude of our foreign affairs officers, the demoralization of our local and border police officers. He hears of it everywhere. So, having made his own fortunes, needing no more, he claims he owes our nation a great debt (and so he does!) He insists he will make America great again. Like it was in the years he and I were not embarrassed to sing about this sweet land of liberty.
But the naysayers in media and politics skip gingerly over his essential idea – that under his leadership our economy and foreign affairs will improve greatly, that his policies will return our economy to it natural dynamism. He will lower taxes, which will bring business back to America, which in turn will produce more jobs, and produce excess revenue, which we can use to pay down the debt, which will once again make us the world’s acknowledged economic powerhouse, which will restore our greatness.
Yet the media natters and pffs! Exactly how can we trust someone who has declared bankruptcy several times to do all this? Nevermind that he has always emerged more successful in the end. Wobbly-kneed Republicans make worried faces and say yes but he’s not nice. They don’t like him. He’s too bombastic. Or, well, they think he has too much pride in his own accomplishments to be president.
The establishment wants someone more docile. Someone whose greatest accomplishments have been more like those on the Democratic side, ie: government solutions. They want someone more... well... pliable.
Too much pride?
If Donald Trump can make America great again, won’t all of us feel a sense of pride in a resuscitated nation? Won’t that pride spill over into our attitudes, in our work, in our family and community, and lift the standards of our personal ambitions? Of course it will. More kids, especially those in inner cities, will once again grow up hearing about broader possibilities for them, about the national pride that inspired so many of us back in the day to climb up out of whatever socioeconomic depth we may have been in, to break the chains that held our parents. The sunlight of greater personal opportunity should warm every American’s easy smiling face.
Wasn’t this our Founders’ vision for the future of their new republic. One free from the interference of an overly large government? Where opportunity is the fundamental engine of accomplishment and economic success? No matter how many millions of citizens might dwell within?
The pilgrims’ pride must be everyone’s.
