News Every Day | 06:20

Time for a New National Anthem

The president-elect has set an ambitious agenda for his first day in office: planning to cut federal funding for “gender-affirming” health care, deport illegal immigrants, impose tariffs, and expand oil drilling. I would like to add one more to the list — change our national anthem.

Remember that “The Star-Spangled Banner,” published in 1814, has been our official anthem for less than a century, having been signed into law by Pres. Herbert Hoover on March 4, 1931. Since then, proposed alternatives include, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” and “Hail, Columbia.” The former has been rejected because of its melody (it is nearly identical to “God Save the King”), and we only hear the latter when the vice president walks onto the stage.

“America the Beautiful” has been proposed several times and is undoubtedly the best candidate. First of all, it’s easier to sing. Before Game 1 of the World Series, country music singer Brad Paisley scaled the anthem down to the key of A from the traditional B flat, and with good reason, since most baritones (I’m one of them) top out at E above middle C. Spanning only fourteen semitones, “America the Beautiful” is much easier on the vocal chords (and eardrums) than “The Star-Spangled Banner’s” nineteen.

In fact, if you listened closely to the anthems played during the Olympics, you probably noticed that the best boast the narrowest range. “Het Wilhelmus” of the Netherlands matches that of “America the Beautiful.” The French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” covers a mere octave, as does Germany’s “Das Lied der Deutschen.”

Secondly, the poetry of “America the Beautiful” is superior to that of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The latter employs barely memorable metaphors, while the former begs God to “crown” America’s “good” and “refine” her “gold.” The consonance of “purple mountain majesties” only gets better with age. Perhaps her experience of severe discrimination and her witness of dire poverty put the song’s lyricist, Katharine Lee Bates, in a better position than Francis Scott Key to write such polished verse.

There are even deeper reasons to adopt “America the Beautiful.” Most notably, it’s a hymn, as every good anthem should be. Not until the last verse, which we never hear or sing, does Key ask that our nation be “blest,” invoke us to “praise the Power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation,” and propose “In God is our Trust” as our motto. “America the Beautiful,” on the other hand, is a thoroughgoing hymn from beginning to end. It embodies a divine trust that in our current anthem seems but an afterthought.

Even more to the point, whereas we are the primary addressee of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the primary addressee of “America the Beautiful” is our land. Why is this important? Because it releases us from the self-centeredness currently plaguing our nation. Francis Scott Key asks whether we can see the flag still standing. Bates prays that God “shed His grace on thee.”

Like many anthems, we might take our cue from the Book of Psalms. In her most extreme moments of crisis, Israel addresses songs not to God, but to herself. Oppressed by seemingly endless captivity in Babylon, the Psalmist cries out, “If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand wither.” The Psalmist also addresses Jerusalem directly in her most ecstatic moments of joy. Ascending the temple mount, the Psalmist sings, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’ And now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.”

This is the kind of voice our country needs: an anthem that sings to our nation as a union (“America, America!”) rather than to the individuals that make it up (“O say can you see?”). That might help us take up the well-being of our nation as a collective duty rather than the duty of an elite few. Nowhere is this more poignant than in the lines, “God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law!”

Our nation indeed has a soul, but, as Bates’s hymn reminds us, her soul is vulnerable to the citizens’ lack of self-control. The point of “America the Beautiful” is that it is our responsibility to acquire the virtues necessary to sustain this great experiment. Those virtues are indebted to the gift of reason, without which a republic like ours would be utterly impossible. “The freedom of men,” writes John Locke, “and liberty of acting according to his own will is grounded on his having reason, which is able to instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know how far he is left to the freedom of his own will.”

Similarly, the “law” referred to in “America the Beautiful” is a much wider concept than bills passed by a freely elected, representative legislature. It is the “law” conceived precisely as the right and wrong accessible to human reason and apprehended by it as something not of its own device. “True law is reason,” writes Cicero, “right and natural, commanding people to fulfill their obligation and prohibiting and deterring them from doing wrong.”

I’m old enough to remember when baseball fans were led to sing the national anthem rather than subjected to a solo performance. A more sober hymn like “America the Beautiful” is less prone to usurpation. Mr. President-elect, it’s time for a new anthem, one that recapitulates the fundamental principles upon which a liberal democracy depends. Given the choice between witnessing “bombs bursting in air” over Fort McHenry and taking in the panoramic view from Pikes Peak that inspired Bates’s “America the Beautiful,” I’d choose the latter. A new national anthem would bring in a breath of fresh air and clear out the sterile smoke of self-centeredness.

Daniel B. Gallagher is a Lecturer in Literature and Philosophy at Ralston College.

What Trump’s Cabinet Picks All Have in Common: They Don’t Give a ____

Tracing Our Problems to the 1960s

The post Time for a New National Anthem appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.