Forget about “nothing succeeding like success.” The Political Correctness Movement’s motto would more aptly read: “Nothing exceeds like excess.”
The thought sprang to mind while watching the PBS Television series American Masters recently. A narrator on the series, hopelessly in the thrall of political correctitude, saw fit casually to dismiss the song “America the Beautiful” as expressing anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant sentiments.
“These people are quite beyond parody,” was my first reaction. My second was to err on the side of charity and to reach for my computer to check the words—just in case I had misjudged him.
Lo and behold! I found three versions. The first dated 1893 was entitled “A Poem For July 4th.” The second and third versions, dated 1905 and 1913 were what might best be described as “polishes” of the original.
Having spent a good deal of time pawing over Nazi documents and records during six years in Germany, I flatter myself that I am pretty good at detecting anti-Semitic and xenophobic sentiments.
Frankly, I can find absolutely noting anti-Semitic or anti-immigrant about “America the Beautiful”. It is a simply a song that extols the inspiring history of this truly wonderful country.
Nowhere does it advance the claim that America should “rule” other countries—as in “Rule Britannia” (so beloved of the audiences at the Promenade Concerts, sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation, PBS’s infinitely superior inspiration, mentor, and source of programming).
Nor does it claim that America is superior to other countries as in “Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles!” It is simply a paean to American exceptionalism—an entirely different kettle of fish.
Nor, for that matter, is it a bloodthirsty call to revolution, such as “La Marseillaise,” or socialist and communist anthems such as “The People’s Flag is deepest red!” or “Arise ye starvelings from your slumbers!”
But judge for you selves:
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
At first, I wondered whether perhaps the real objection to the song is that it invokes the name of God, with the petition that he “shed his Grace” on our country. But it surely can’t be that—because God is worshipped by both Jews and Moslems as well as Christians. Nowhere does the song invoke a specifically Christian God.
Actually, I think the real objection to “America the Beautiful” is that the history it extols is the history of a nation the founding of which was inspired by a uniquely Christian vision.
And in this unbuttoned and unbridled age of ours how can such sentiments as “confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law” be acceptable for public utterance?
Over the past couple of decades or so, claims by Christians that they are experiencing discrimination because of their faith have been routinely written off as over-sensitivity or even paranoia. But the experience over the last few decades—especially in the realm of public prayer and displays of such religious symbols as crosses, Christmas cribs and the Ten Commandments—cannot be so lightly dismissed.
Indeed, Christians might well be forgiven for adopting the wry Israeli proverb: “Just because you’re paranoiac, it doesn’t mean somebody’s not trying to kill you.” GPH✠
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