While on a vacation/road trip this week, I had the chance to hear lots of country music, etc. For Memorial Day, the various radio stations focused on just a few “patriotic” songs written after 9/11. These songs include Charlie Daniels’ “This ain’t no rag, it’s a flag”, Bo Diddley’s “We ain’t scared of you (my Eagle is pissed)”, Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”, Martina McBride’s “Independence Day”, and a few others.
I started thinking on the difference between these songs and the older songs that speak of “O Beautiful for Patriot’s dream”, “My country tis of Thee, sweet land of liberty”, “let freedom ring”, “land of the free and the home of the brave.”
In these songs, war is not glorified. We do not sing about the “statue of liberty shaking its fist”, “a day of reckoning”, or how we’re going to destroy and kill and do it with a piqued pleasure.
Doesn’t it sometimes seem like what used to be of great worth to this nation has been replaced with a cheap nationalism?
Perhaps it is time for us to return to the real principles of America?