Editorials/Moral Hams and Brutes/Our National Anthem
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS MORAL HAMS AND BRUTES T he Communist regimes of Eastern 1. Europe have collapsed so fast that thousands of Eastern bloc intelligence agents and military advisers are now stranded...
...Is Senator Mitchell in favor of isolating China as we did in the 1950s and 1960s when at least Chairman Mao was causing mischief throughout the Third World and railing against the West...
...Now they all want to discuss the topic of a Conservative Crack-Up, but once again without addressing the evidence...
...Congressman Jacobs has passed no bad checks, never appeared drunk and disorderly in public (though I do not approve of his voting record, and he has uttered considerable pish and posh over the years in pursuance of the Liberal hallucination), and only pilfered from the U.S...
...What is more, the Liberals have nothing new or alluring to offer the electorate...
...Now this great man is haranguing George Bush for sending emissaries to the Communist government of Peking...
...It would be a grand way to begin a baseball game or the carnage of football and hockey...
...congressman would have difficulty singing any drinking song whatsoever...
...the national anthem to the readers of Parade magazine, where 315,000 recently cast their vote for him as against 74,000 stick-in-the-muds who insist on singing the unsingable...
...The Star Spangled Banner" is useful because it has been with us through our lives and the lives of all our American ancestors—or at least most of our American ancestors...
...Treasury on behalf of the usual Noble Causes, never for personal gain...
...The decline of Communism means the decline of conservatism, if you can follow the sudorific logic...
...It would be worth every penny...
...He claims he has difficulty singing our present anthem...
...Nowadays he would have us "dialogue" with Cuba, Nicaragua, and doubtless the guerrillas in El Salvador...
...Finally, Congressman Jacobs acquiesces to the old charge that the song contains "outdated anti-British sentiments...
...but like the Claude Rains character in Casablanca he is "shocked" that the Bush Administration has entered into dialoguewith Peking, for he is "shocked" that its Communist despots acted like Communist despots in Tiananmen Square...
...It has been with us in war and peace...
...George Mitchell, senator from the great state of Maine, new and allurAdapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...
...In the early 1980s some conservatives, myself included, attempted to initiate discussion of a Liberal Crack-Up based on a string of Liberal political defeats, policy botches, and defections from the Liberal cause...
...He comes up with nothing new, though he wants us Americans to begin sports events with something new...
...In the 1970s these poseurs were for "negotiations" with every left-wing despotism on earth, despite the fact that America was too weak to negotiate with Botswana and that many of the despotic negotiants had no desire to negotiate...
...He is chagrined by the present anthem's unwholesome origins as a drinking song that "few of us will ever master the singing of...
...Well, as a matter of fact, Senator Mitchell is one of those moral hams who is interested neither in reverting to the policies of the past nor in confecting a policy for the future...
...Olympic Team enters the stadium at the opening ceremonies of an Olympiade singing "Happy Birthday"—talk about good will...
...Or does one consider the Hon...
...In making his case against "The Star Spangled Banner," the Singing Congressman resorts to the same stale charges that have been reviewed by the citizenry before and found ,unpersuasive...
...Senator Mitchell is not alone...
...George Bush is a conservative...
...EDITORIALS MORAL HAMS AND BRUTES T he Communist regimes of Eastern 1. Europe have collapsed so fast that thousands of Eastern bloc intelligence agents and military advisers are now stranded throughout the Third World with no guarantee of airfare home and possibly no home...
...Right now only a handful of demonstrators have to gather there, and the KGB is out in force...
...Of course, it was originally an old English drinking song, and I find it implausible that a U.S...
...As with all Capitol Hill figures, Congressman Jacobs wants to leave his mark on history, and so he now takes his case for changing by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...And think of the impact worldwide as the U.S...
...Come, come, anti-British sentiments are never outdated...
...Yet in this great free world capital one of the emerging news stories is the story of a "Conservative Crack-Up" within the United States...
...I f we really must change the national 1 anthem to a more tuneful song abrim with generosity and with no nationalistic huffing and puffing, a song bespeaking the genius of the Americanpeople and suggestive of the Republic's natural endowments, how about "Happy Birthday...
...The brutality of the Red Chinese was far greater then than now and there was far less evidence that it might ameliorate...
...Well, if he cannot perceive the essential mawkishness of this song, let him consider this...
...Would Senator Mitchell favor returning to the former American policy of championing Taiwan as a pro-Western alternative to Peking...
...They are winning...
...Well, Sir, down a few beers and try again...
...No Liberal wanted to discuss the subject...
...The gravamen of the argument that conservatism is going to crack up is that conservatives will no longer have anti-Communism to hold them together...
...There are thousands of these brutes who hitherto have grimly gone about the business of fomenting international terror and subversion from such garden spots as Central America and the Middle East...
...I have no quarrel with "America the Beautiful...
...Perhaps the congressman's problem is that he makes his attempts in the morning...
...Of course, Mr...
...Such lyrics as "This land is your land, this land is my land, . . . This land was made for you and me...
...Ah, but I am being droll...
...He goes along with the old canard that the song is too bellicose, but weigh it against "La Marseillaise...
...Yet, the spoilsports will contend that there are some things not to be changed...
...Alas, so rapid has been the decline of their Communist governments that they now can be numbered among the homeless...
...The Hon...
...After all, the conservatives have not been losing and are not without policies...
...That is a fact...
...Was Senator Mitchell opposed to the Nixon opening with China in 1972...
...The song is copyrighted, so the government will have to pay a little for this anthem...
...Such Liberals sanctimoniously intone high-minded pieties under the mistaken impression that they are intoning policies...
...McCarthy is a left-wing sentimentalist who does not understand that the lyrics to the Guthrie song would play right into the hands of European sophisticates who insist Americans are yokels...
...Furthermore, conservatives do not need anti-Communism to hold them together when there is always a towering pecksniff like Senator Mitchell around wearing a clown's suit and demonstrating that Liberalism is bankrupt...
...McCarthy's recommenOUR NATIONAL ANTHEM 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1990 dation is that we drop the present anthem for what he calls "Woody Guthries classic," "This Land is Your Land...
...Try it in the afternoon, Mr...
...Yet how can we convince a common congressman that something is valuable because it is old...
...As against the anthems of most virile republics "The Star Spangled Banner" is actually quite irenic...
...But anti-Communism is another conservative position that is being vindicated by history, and it is not the only binding idea of conservatism...
...His approval rating is near 70 percent...
...Congressman Andrew Jacobs (D- V. , Ind...
...Jacobs, just after lunch...
...Jacobs is a highly esteemed member of the House, he being one of those honorable gentlemen who have never been arrested, indicted, tried, or incarcerated...
...Its value is that it is old...
...Will he be "shocked" if the Soviets respond similarly in Red Square...
...Though our evidence was indisputable it was not unavoidable, and so the Liberals simply refused, to discuss the crack-up that has kept them out of synch with the electorate for a decade...
...No Liberal is a threat to him, and all Liberalism still faces the problem of confronting the extremism in its ranks...
...Dozens of other moral hams from the Liberal ranks are reviling the Bush Administration for doing precisely what Democrats in the past have urged...
...also known as "the Singing Congressman," has for nearly a year had legislation before Congress that would change the national anthem from "The Star Spangled Banner" to "America the Beautiful...
...As music it is lovelier than the "Star Spangled Banner," but I agree with the columnist Colman McCarthy that some of its lyrics make no sense...
...could very easily be misinterpreted abroad as the lyrics of an anthem for greedy real estate developers...
...My guess is that the electorate sees through their hypocrisy, and the Liberal Crack-Up endures...
...ing...
...All Americans are familiar with its lush, rolling, profoundly ingratiating lilt...
Vol. 23 • February 1990 • No. 2
