One of my favorite movie scenes is in “Casablanca.” It’s in Rick’s bar when Nazi officers begin to sing a German patriotic tune and are drowned out by the French loyalists who stand and deliver a defiant and joyous “La Marseillaise.” Always brings the tears.

It did the other night when I saw the film again. It’s amazing how a story about a corrupt world exploiting desperate people who’ve lost their homes and fortunes can lift your spirits these days. Of course, we know how that story ends. We’re still waiting on our own.

La Marseillaise is not my national anthem but it made me think of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” which is kind of our unofficial national anthem. Most of us know it by its first line, even though its title is “America.” Just good old America. Not Middle America. Or Regular America. Or Small Town America. Or Urban Elite America.

We’ve been belting it out since we were school kids, most of us probably without even thinking about the lyrics. So I thought I’d go through them again.

“My country ‘tis of thee.”
Whose country? MY country. I am my country. My country is me. All 300 million of us “me’s” have joint ownership and responsibility in America, which, as the song points out, is a country, not a club.

“Sweet land of liberty.”
Sadly our land is not as sweet as it was in 1831 when Samuel Smith, a seminary student in Massachusetts, wrote about it. That was before factory farms and industrial pollution and endangered songbirds and plastic dumps the size of a disappearing glacier.

And what about the sweetness of our people? “I’m going to whip his you know what,” is not an oath that just came out of a boxing ring. It was preparation for a presidential debate, an event which is supposed to reveal the greater statesman, not the latest sucker punch.

And “liberty”? One definition for liberty is immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority. We’re still having trouble with that one

“Of thee I sing.”
Singing about your country is good. As long as you sing along and don’t try any strange, unusual harmony.

Be careful who you sing with and from which songbook.

“Land where my fathers died.”
That’s plural. Everybody’s fathers. Black, white, brown, red, yellow. Fighting fathers and working fathers. Desperate fathers who crawl on their bellies through the American desert for a chance to pick tomatoes and grapes for Big Ag fathers.
Land where mothers died too. Some because they were forced to have children for whom they couldn’t care. Some who watched their children grow up angry and sick because family values don’t always extend to people like them.

“Land of the Pilgrims’ pride.”
Here’s a nod to our first and noble immigrants, religious refugees from England who were searching for a place where they could freely practice their beliefs. America developed into a nation where religion and government didn’t mix. Something happened.

What about that word “pride”? Americans were once proud of our openness to new ideas. We used to brag about our superior education. But today? Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be intellectuals.

And now for the finish:
“From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”
That last part, “let freedom ring,” is repeated often but never so eloquently and hopefully as by Martin Luther King, who must be somewhere thinking, “America, what are you doing to My Country?”

Listen to the My Country ‘Tis of Us Podcast of Another Voice on KRCB-FM

Tags: Juicy_Tomatoes, Martin_Luther_King, National_Anthem, Susan_Swartz

This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 9:23 am and is filed under Books and Movies, Media, Musings, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.