The most familiar verses of America's popular anthems express love of country in a variety of ways. There's the hippy-dippy sentiment of "This Land Is Your Land":
This land is your land, this land is my landNothing there, unless you're a welfare-state liberal who likes scenery.
From California, to the New York island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
Let's try the first verse of "America the Beautiful":
O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grainIt's "This Land Is Your Land" without the socialism.
For purple mountain majesties above thy fruited plain!
America, America, god shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea
"God Bless America" -- composed in the years before World War II -- begins to get it right:
While the storm clouds gather far across theNow we have "the land that's free" as well as beautiful.
Sea, let us swear allegiance to a land that's free.
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, as we
Raise our voices in a solemn prayer.
God bless America, land that I love
Stand beside her and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains to the prairies,
To the oceans white with foam.
God bless America, my home sweet home.
God bless America, my home sweet home.
The first verse of "America" gets to the heart of the matter by focusing on liberty and its deep roots in America:
My country ‘tis of thee,And the "Star Spangled Banner" reminds us that war is sometimes the price of liberty:
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrims’ pride,
From ev’ry mountain side,
Let freedom ring.
Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,It's hard to sing, and it lacks the lyrical beauty of its competitors, but the "Star Spangled Banner" still says it best: America is the beacon of liberty, and Americans so cherish liberty that millions of them have been willing to go to war for its sake.
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
In my next post on this subject I'll look at sacrifice for liberty's sake. It won't be all about going to war.