The decision of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick to sit during the pregame playing of the national anthem has had a larger impact than anyone could have foreseen.
President Obama has weighed in, endorsing Kaepernick’s “constitutional right to make a statement.” When Kaepernick changed his protest to kneeling instead of sitting, teammate Eric Reid joined him. Brandon Marshall of the Denver Broncos followed suit and lost an endorsement deal. Marcus Peters of the Kansas City Chiefs raised a fist during the anthem, a la John Carlos and Tommy Smith at the 1968 Olympics. An unidentified Navy sailor who took a seat in solidarity with Kaepernick may face disciplinary action. The protest has even spread to high school players across the country.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem before the team’s preseason game against the San Diego Chargers on Sept. 1, 2016, in San Diego.
Photo: Denis Poroy/AP
Much of the debate generated by Kaepernick has been on subjects directly connected to his actions: police brutality, free speech, and the rights and obligations of professional athletes.
But it’s also sparked nationwide discussion of something more tangential that no one saw coming — the meaning and history of “The Star-Spangled Banner” itself, including whether it should be rewritten or replaced entirely.
The very fact this controversy was surprising may be the most significant thing about it. It’s the clearest demonstration possible that even in 2016, the U.S. has barely begun dragging the unflattering aspects of its past out into the light. Part of that means facing the reality that everything about “The Star-Spangled Banner” — its lyrics, its author, and the path it took to becoming the national anthem — is inextricably bound up with America’s gruesome history of racism.
The Meaning of “The Hireling and Slave”
It took 117 years from the time “The Star-Spangled Banner” was written in 1814 until it was legally enshrined as the American national anthem in 1931.
A painting titled “By Dawn’s Early Light” depicts Francis Scott Key standing on a boat with his arm outstretched toward the United States flag flying over Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland.
Photo: Edward Percy Moran/Library of Congress
Francis Scott Key wrote the poem that became the song’s lyrics on Sept. 14, 1814, after witnessing the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the (poorly named) War of 1812. As The Intercept recently noted, Key’s little-known third stanza includes these lines:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
By the time Key wrote these words, the British military included a regiment of former slaves called the Colonial Marines, whom the British had encouraged to escape and then trained and armed.
In fact, just weeks before, on Aug. 24, 1814, the Colonial Marines had participated in the Battle of Bladensburg outside Washington, D.C. The Bladensburg fight was a quick, embarrassing defeat for American troops — something Key knew because he’d witnessed it up close as a volunteer aide to a U.S. general. The British forces, including the Colonial Marines, had then continued to Washington the same day, infamously occupying and torching the White House.
The Intercept stated that “slave” referred to these Colonial Marines. However, an enormous number of readers argued that this identification was incorrect, and that Key did not literally mean escaped slaves.
Many such commenters cited an obscure website that describes itself as “history for kids” and states that “slave” refers to U.S. sailors who had been seized and press-ganged into the British navy. (The impressment of Americans was a central grievance cited by the U.S in the lead-up to war.) Others suggested that small-r republican rhetoric from the era often referred to any subjects of a monarch as slaves, and hence the word simply signified all the British.
Key himself never explained precisely what he meant by the third stanza. According to Marc Leepson, author of a recent biography of Key, Key spoke about “The Star-Spangled Banner” in public just once and did not mention this issue. Key did not write about the song in his surviving letters.
That said, Leepson explains, while researching his book he “did not find any historians who interpreted the ‘hireling and slave’ line as anything but a reference to the enslaved people who escaped their bonds and went over to the British side.” Leepson himself also believes it is “clear” this is the correct way to interpret the stanza.
Among the academic experts with this perspective is Alan Taylor, a University of Virginia professor and one of the foremost contemporary scholars of early U.S. history. Two of Taylor’s books have won the Pulitzer Prize; one of these, “The Internal Enemy,” addresses the song’s third stanza, calling it “Key’s dig at the British for employing Colonial Marines.”
In response to questions, Taylor pointed out that it “makes no sense” to believe that Key was referring to impressed U.S. sailors: “American rhetoric of the time cast the impressed sailors as defiant and unbroken by British might — as the exact opposite of the slave.” Moreover, Key certainly would not be celebrating the deaths of Americans held by the British.
A proclamation by British Adm. Alexander Cochrane during the War of 1812, offering emancipation to “Persons” able to make it to British ships or military outposts.
Photo: Maryland State Archives
Other academic historians with this view include Gene Allen Smith, a specialist in early American and American naval history and author of “The Slaves’ Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812″; David Reedier; Marc Wayne Kruman; and John Belohlavek. Even Marc Clague, a musicologist and co-founder of the Star Spangled Music Foundation, who strongly defends the song overall, agrees that by “slave” Key meant the Colonial Marines.
By the mid-1800s, the phrase “hireling and slave” could be found in the writing of slavery’s supporters to differentiate between wage laborers and those in actual bondage. Whether this usage was adopted from “The Star-Spangled Banner” or the other way around is unclear, but William Grayson, a U.S. representative from South Carolina, even titled a famed 1855 pro-slavery poem “The Hireling and the Slave.” Grayson contended that slavery had been a “blessing” for Africans and was morally superior to a system of wage work. Grayson also described whites using a new term he had coined: a “master race.”
“I Bought an Old Woman and a Little Girl”
Francis Scott Key could be called the most unknown famous person in U.S. history. A look at his rarely examined life makes clear how difficult it is to separate the national anthem’s meaning from its author, and his gross hypocrisy on the meaning of freedom.
Key was born in 1779 on his wealthy family’s Maryland plantation, known as Terra Rubra. After childhood he left to study law and eventually moved to Washington, D.C., where he kept one or two slaves as servants. In 1813, the year before the British attack on Fort McHenry, Key wrote to his father to inform him that he had just purchased “an old woman and a little girl about 12 or 18 years old.” Key offered to send them to his parents to work on their plantation and apparently did so; in a subsequent letter he asked his mother “how you like the old woman and the girl.”
Upon his father’s death, Key inherited Terra Rubra and its coerced workforce. Key was not physically cruel as a master and during his lifetime freed seven of his household’s slaves. (One, Clem Johnson, had been the plantation’s assistant estate manager. Johnson subsequently stayed at Terra Rubra to help oversee Key’s property, both land and humans.)
Moreover, as Key’s biographer Leepson explains, Key “strongly opposed international slave trafficking on humanitarian grounds, and defended enslaved people and free blacks without charge in the D.C. courts. If you cherry-picked his words on slavery, you might think he was an abolitionist.”
That, however, would be almost 180 degrees from the truth.
In his work, Key was the prototypical Washington lobbyist. In the 1820s, he parlayed his celebrity as patriotic poet into a lucrative law practice helping clients with business before the federal government. During this period, Key also represented slaveholders attempting to retrieve their escaped “property.” In time, Key became a confidant to President Andrew Jackson. He was, in today’s parlance, a Washington insider.
When Jackson appointed Key to serve as district attorney for Washington in 1833, it was not least to enforce the law controlling African-Americans, both those enslaved and the city’s growing population of free blacks. During Key’s seven years in office he proved an energetic and moralistic prosecutor, taking on the dangers of fornication and abolitionism with equal fervor.
In 1833, Key tried to shut down the capital’s “bawdy houses,” the popular female-run brothels that served both white and black customers. (A glance at 20-plus pages of “escort” advertisements in today’s D.C. Yellow Pages indicates that Key failed to stamp out sex work in Washington.) The same year, Key indicted John Prout, a free, black school teacher who had forged papers for a young enslaved couple attempting to escape to freedom. Prout was convicted and was forced to leave town.
The next year, Key ignored the First Amendment to persecute Ben Lundy, a courageous editor who published an anti-slavery newspaper in the capital. Lundy and his assistant editor, the young but soon-to-be famous William Lloyd Garrison, also had to flee Washington, lest they be assaulted by slavers.
Key, like many U.S. politicians after him, was a stickler for “law and order.” Blacks who encountered the constables serving Key often ended up robbed or dead. When a white riot swept the city in August 1835, Key sought to quell fears of a slave rebellion by seeking the death penalty for Arthur Bowen, a young black man accused of attempted murder. When doubts arose about Bowen’s guilt, District Attorney Key was implacable in seeking to hang him. (This perilous battle is recounted in more detail in the book “Snow-Storm in August” by this article’s co-author.)
Key next prosecuted a New York doctor who had moved to Washington with a trunk of anti-slavery literature. The trial attracted attention across the nation. In the courtroom, Key emotionally denounced the abolitionists who wanted to free all enslaved people.
They “declare that every law which sanctions slavery is null and void, and that obedience to it is a sin,” Key declaimed. “That we have no more rights over our slaves than they have over us. Does not this bring the Constitution and the laws under which we live into contempt? Is it not a plain invitation to resist them?”
An 1836 American Anti-Slavery Society broadsheet condemning the sale and keeping of slaves in Washington and calling the city the “Land of the Free” and “Home of the Oppressed.”
Photo: William S. Dorr/Library of Congress
The American Anti-Slavery Society responded by mocking Key’s most famous words. In an 1836 broadsheet distributed nationwide, the abolitionists detailed the atrocities of human trafficking in the U.S. capital under the headline “Land of the Free/Home of the Oppressed.” If Twitter had existed in the 1830s, that likely would have become a trending hashtag: #HomeOfTheOppressed.
Seen through the prism of Key’s life, then, the significance of his words about the “land of the free” comes into focus. For Key, freedom was never a promise available to everyone; white freedom and white lives were what mattered.
“A Monstrous Perversion”
The popularity of “The Star-Spangled Banner” grew continuously in the decades after Key wrote the lyrics. By the time of the Civil War, some on both sides tried to claim it as their own.
Tellingly, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. felt that if the song were to belong to the North, it would need a new stanza — one he provided, invoking “the millions unchained who our birthright have gained.” By contrast, supporters in the South did not believe it required any changes. “Let us never surrender to the North the noble song, the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’” the Richmond Examiner editorialized in 1861 in the capital of the Confederacy. “It is Southern in origin, in sentiments, in poetry, and song. In its association with chivalrous deeds, it is ours.”
In the subsequent decades, “The Star-Spangled Banner” continued to be contested territory and the subject of what we’d now term a culture war. By the early 1900s, versions of the song that included Holmes’s words were found in schoolbooks in New York, Indiana, Louisiana, and elsewhere.
When Confederate veterans realized this, they quickly organized to force state governments, including that of New York, to withdraw the textbooks. The New York Times declared that Holmes’s words were a “monstrous perversion” and Holmes himself was a “presumptuous ass.” (The extra stanza has since largely evaporated and is not part of the anthem’s official lyrics.)
The skirmishing continued after the carnage of World War I, as momentum grew for the U.S. to adopt a formal national anthem. Pacifists denounced “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a war-mongering, anti-British jingle. A progressive heiress took out an anti-Banner ad in several newspapers, and several Columbia University professors announced a contest for a more suitable replacement.
On the other side, Maryland Rep. John Linthicum, the Daughters of the Confederacy, and other Southern civic organizations declared that the song was the essence of American patriotism.
An article printed in the Baltimore Sun on June 15, 1931, recounts a parade clash between two color guards.
Photo: The Baltimore Sun
By the 1920s, the battle lines were clear. Those who wanted to celebrate the post-Civil War unity of North and South without reference to the abolition of slavery favored “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Many Northerners preferred the emancipationist spirit of “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” or the stately grandeur of “America the Beautiful.” African-Americans had their own ideas, and in 1926 adopted “Lift Every Voice” by Florida poet James Weldon Johnson as a black national anthem.
In 1931 there was finally a clear winner: Congress approved, and President Herbert Hoover signed, Rep. Linthicum’s bill making “The Star-Spangled Banner” America’s one and only national anthem.
Controversy ensued within 48 hours. Partisans of the Banner held a parade in Linthicum’s Baltimore district, led by two color guards: one hoisting the American flag, the other carrying the Confederate flag.
The Union Army veterans marching in the parade dropped out and denounced the damned rebels for hijacking the proceedings. In response, one neo-Confederate woman — in what sounds like an indignant Facebook post from this year — accused the offended Union veterans of being un-American and “divisive.”
“History Could Be Swallowed Up So Completely”
The suppression of history embodied by “The Star-Spangled Banner” is by no means unique to the U.S. On the contrary, it’s universal: The most important and painful realities of any society’s past tend to be forgotten unless constant efforts are made to remember them.
Intriguingly, one of the most eloquent descriptions of this phenomenon is found in Barack Obama’s autobiography, “Dreams From My Father.”
In 1967, when Obama was 6, he and his mother joined his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, in Indonesia — just two years after one of the most astonishing bloodbaths of the 20th century had taken place there. Suharto, an Indonesian general, had seized power in 1965 and with U.S. support massacred at least 500,000 leftists and communists over just a few months.
Yet on the surface, Obama writes, there was little sign of this. His stepfather refused to speak of the past, and his mother learned of it only from “innuendo” and “half-whispered asides” from Americans when she went to work at the U.S. Embassy. According to Obama, this is the lesson she took from this:
The idea frightened her, the notion that history could be swallowed up so completely, the same way the rich and loamy earth could soak up the rivers of blood that had once coursed through the streets; the way people could continue about their business … as if nothing had happened. …
Power. The word fixed in my mother’s mind like a curse. In America, it had generally remained hidden from view until you dug beneath the surface of things; until you visited an Indian reservation or spoke to a black person whose trust you had earned. But here power was undisguised, indiscriminate, naked. … And so Lolo had made his peace with power, learned the wisdom of forgetting.
Americans today are fortunate that the penalties for remembering our past, while real, are much less severe than in many other times and places. If we truly aspire to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, we should be able to examine the real history of “The Star-Spangled Banner” — and most importantly, the degree to which that history is still alive today. Our current difficulty in facing our past honestly and soberly strongly suggests that we are still a long way from laying it to rest.
Top photo: A rare first edition of the sheet music of “The Star-Spangled Banner” is displayed at a press preview for a sale at Christie’s on Nov. 30, 2010, in New York.
Key certainly would not be celebrating the deaths of Americans held by the British. And it looks the usa-prosecutors are following a criminal stance against what is right, and that is plain unlawful and unethical just like the following usa corrupt prosecutor, Key next prosecuted a New York doctor who had moved to Washington with a trunk of anti-slavery literature. The trial attracted attention across the nation. In the courtroom, Key emotionally denounced the abolitionists who wanted to free all enslaved people. And the current and recent usa presidents, and corrupt high public office puppets follow their reverential tyranny with equal unequivocal fallacies as exemplified by key. They “declare that every law which sanctions slavery is null and void, and that obedience to it is a sin,” Key declaimed. “That we have no more rights over our slaves than they have over us. Does not this bring the Constitution and the laws under which we live into contempt? Is it not a plain invitation to resist them?” Now it is not just domestically, it is even abroad and unilaterally perpetrating it(tyranny) while cloaked/dressed in democracy clothing while subverting it with tyranny.
“ “ “ “ “ “Land of the Free/Home of the Oppressed.“ “ “ “ “
the abolitionists(1836) detailed the atrocities of human trafficking in the U.S. capital under the latter mention headline(quotations).
the “land of the free” comes into focus. For Key, freedom was never a promise available to everyone; white freedom and white lives were what mattered Because the legitimate context how why key wrote the usa- anthem/hymn was against black slaves who had freed themselves with the uk-monarqy pledge that they(slaves) would never be return to their former white owners but to be set free.
Therefore, it is beyond reasonable analylsis and doubt that Tay to believe that Key was referring to impressed/imprisoned U.S. sailors is by deduction, and reasonable logic— as the exact opposite of the slave.” Moreover, Key certainly would not be celebrating the deaths of Americans held by the British by singing the racist U.S.A. hymn/anthem BECAUSE For Key, freedom was never a promise available to everyone; white freedom and white lives were what mattered.
Claiming (the stead) to be the beacon of democracy and freedom and chanting to the six hundred and sixty six wind “”to be the land of the free and the home of the brave””(alias known as the melting pot, integration and assimilation) while subverting them is a fallacious aspiration as well as plain hypocrisy and the degree that racism (discrimination) is still alive today is a long way from being the champion of these values, just take a look at the criminal cloaked/dressed under the color of law while murdering non-combative and non-threatening mothers, fathers, teens, families, and children.
Common sense is not the essence of relativity, nor it is relative moses, socrates, and aristotles:)))))) – Alejandro Grace Ararat.
I have a question: Can someone please explain what is so sacred/important about the national anthem in and of itself? I am not trying to be facetious. I am not going to insult anyone for their opinion, or argue with anyone.. I will have nothing but sincere thanks for anyone who takes the time to seriously respond to my question with a thoughtful answer.
I guess I am a little bit confused, because I encounter people who are enraged whenever their is some slight to a national symbol (flag, anthem, etc.), but many of those people seem oblivious to rampant violation of the U.S. Constitution, rampant violations of the Bill of Rights, and who seem outright hostile to the traditional American value of personal freedom.
In my opinion (although I am very willing to admit that I might be wrong, and respectfully welcome anyone to point out where I might be wrong), most of the patriotism in the contemporary United States seems entirely ritualistic. I see people with virtually no knowledge of U.S. history, and no knowledge of U.S. civics, no concept of the enlightenment-era ideals that where the basis of the U.S. constitution, who have no idea what the values of the United States where supposed to be, but who really-really-really love the flag and anthem for some reason.
I was always under the impression that our national symbols where important because they represented our constitution, bill of rights, and philosophy of liberty. But the most conspicuously patriotic people in contemporary U.S.A. seem to be against those values (for example, they support the destruction of the bill of rights in order to “fight terror”). In the contemporary context devoid of any real American values, what is the flag, or the anthem? Why should I care if anyone insults them, what are they really insulting?
Is there any reason beyond sentimentality that I should care about the flag or anthem?
“12 or 18 years old” is a ludicrous thing to write, even if you couldn’t tell the difference, that’s not how anyone writes about vague numbers. Surely, this was copied from handwritten writing where it was a 3 that looked like an 8 and so was really “12 or 13 years old”.
Not that this changes anything about the story here…
Clarification, si vous plait: Was it an “enormous number of Black readers …? Or an enormous number of Latino readers … ” Or an enormous number of WHITE SOUTHERN SIEG HEIL CONFEDERATE readers …? Or an enormous number of First Nations readers … ? Or was it “an enormous number of WHITE readers … who still like to suck their thumbs and still want to DESPERATELY believe those comfy, infantile, narcissistic fairy tales told them when they were children.?”
But I am grateful that the article sets that “enormous number of readers” straight … unless they are just DEAD-ENDERS, just losers.
RE: “However, an enormous number of readers argued that this identification was incorrect, and that Key did not literally mean escaped slaves.”
So the Anthem is racist…So what??? Im just a dumbass white boy but Ill give my POV…Are there or are there not successful black people in this country?? Yes or no?? Same with Hispanics..Same with all colors and creeds.. Right??? RIGHT?? Okay…There’s also POOR people in this country..Right?? Blacks, whites, hispanics, yada,yada,yada…Ok so…..What’s your fucking point??? Life sucks??? No shit… Fuck. in my lifetime Ive been discriminated against because I have a fucking skin disease…Lost jobs because of it, not considered for others..That’s not racism , but its still something I have to overcome… LIKE racism…We will ALWAYS have racism in this country( or any country).
The authors are a bunch of gutless cowards stepping on to and over the bodies of those who gave their lives whom pledged their allegiance to the Republic.
Easy for these of who sit on in their posh homes and houses and denounce what they are incapable of of understanding, but can only heap scorn and derision upon which have provided them the right to continue their shallow and miserable lives.
Will the U.S. be able to face its invasion of the world and life with the nuclear menace? What seemed like such a good idea in 1940 has been shown to be a peril beyond our most fearful nightmares. Some say “No one was killed by the TMI accident,” or only 8 people were killed by “Chernobyl and no one was killed by Fukushima/Daiichi”. These people have no F***ing idea how many people were killed or will be killed in the future. The NRC decided to end a National Academy of Sciences study of cancer in populations around nuclear power plants (NPPs). It had been in planning for nearly 5 years. No better evidence exists that WE DON’T WANT TO KNOW what our nuclear age has wrought. Studies of the surrounds of NPPs are done in England and Germany, at least. The U.S. will hide the horrible history of nuclear weapons and power at our own and the world’s peril. No other nation has more to hide than we do.
I’m an African-American career criminal who used to be an ultra conservative republican. However, I’m now a bona fide recidivist and anarchist. I still view the National Anthem as the 1st gangster music recorded in the USA though.
Two groups of organized criminals, both of which engaged in global terrorism, fighting over land gained only through savage means, developed and cultivated my the same uncivilized behaviour. All the while using their colors and extreme violence to mark their stomping grounds.
Here’s a thought. Let’s make the Mohican language the National language to commemorate an entire nation of native American exterminated by very twisted people.
I say let the Apache Nations choose the National Anthem considering they lost so much attempting to defend this land from genuine terror. Europeans!
You are and always will be convict.
http://m.american-historama.org/1801-1828-evolution/star-spangled-banner-lyrics.htm
Don’t you turds have anything better to do? Or do you just enjoy creating controversy? Our National Anthem and The Star Spangled Banner have been around a hell of a lot longer than both of you idiots combined. Go find something else to do!
May I recommend a book: Increase Your Word Power: Using Your Senses to Improve Your VocabularyJan 1, 2007
by Dorothy A. Fontaine Ph.D.
May I recommend a book to you? ‘The Harbrace Guide to Grammar.’
Am I missing something? Maryland was a slave state, therefore had slaves. It was legal at the time. When a war is going on, and there is shelling, everyone living i the area is in danger, hirelings and slaves alike. It’s a statement of fact, with nothing racist about it.
In todays world if your white you are racist.
I’m white and I’ve spent decades fighting for blacks’ rights. So stick THAT in your hat. If you don’t like freedom, go find a nice socialist country to live in.
And get an education; you’re incredibly ignorant.
Wow, this article is a complete pile of Race-Hustling, dog crap propaganda. The only question is whether the authors are incredibly ignorant, or Marxist malcontents.
Meanwhile, think about how many years in school YOU were indoctrinated to PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE to something you knew absolutely ZERO about. That something, that now is waging continuous war, murdering innocent people by the thousands via drones, surveilling the entire planet, and manifesting the desired results of the desires of the .01%. Think about it.
oh… one thing more. YOU have been indoctrinated to think that YOUR LABOR, and your grandchildren, and your grand children’s great grandchildren’s LABOR, should be financially ENSLAVED for the next 200 years, to pay for every fucking .01% abomination laws of those scum sucking Congressional retrobates, who YOU elected, by virtue of the 16th AMENDMENT.. ie.. the INCOME TAX… will suck you and them dry. Until the DUMBEST COUNTRY ON THE PLANET FINALLY REALIZES WHAT IS TAKING PLACE… eat cake.
btw.. the current pledge of the USG to sell to Saudi Arabia, umpteen BILLION DOLLARS in weapons..notwithstanding the OTHER UMPTEEN billions of dollars in arms GIVEN to ISRAEL.. is only a small example of what your childrens children will be enslaved to pay for, … while a federal gun to their temple will surely convince them they should. For life.
This is why America is the DUMBEST COUNTRY ON THE PLANET. After all..we own 400 MILLION GUNS.
The National Anthem was written about a great time when we became our own nation. That was a time when slavery was legal. Do I support slavery? Absolutely not. But I do not condemn the Anthem, either. It was written by a man who witnessed the birth of our country. He was there. He saw it happen. And he wrote the Star Spangled Banner in a manner that was perfectly fine in that day and age. And for centuries, even after the ban of slavery and the enactment of anti-racism regulations, there was absolutely no problem with this song. I won’t say racism was gone, but we were making progress in terms of racial differences. Until the people who are in power over this country now were put into the offices they are in. They have done everything they can to divide this country. They want to keep this race war going. Racism still existed, but through the past decade, the people in power have reversed the progress we’ve made in the right direction. We need new leadership. Leadership that abides by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Leadership that holds fast to the principles that this country was founded on. And if there are those in America who don’t want this country to be the America it was meant to be, they can leave.
The lyrics were written in 1814.
That would make the nation approximately 38 years old when born?
Actually, the U.S. Constitution wasn’t fully ratified until May 29, 1790 – that is when the US actually became a constitutional republic. Francis Scott Key was born on August 1, 1779,
Well, I guess that’s possible; it’s only about a hundred miles from Key’s birthplace to Philadelphia.
I doubt he would have had really clear memories, however, since he wasn’t quite three years old when the Declaration was signed.
Ooh! Love it or leave it. Très original.
I read your comment as many of the others with my mouth ajar. I can’t believe the nostalgia and yearning for ” heh we are good, what I was told was right, please let me take the pill (Matrix) that keeps me in my bubble”.
Like in my country (to a lesser extent) , things are NOT right with race relations.
wake up
I don’t think this is productive.
Undermining every aspect of shared American identity only sharpens the divisions between us.
We need to be looking to build bridges between the different groups of our society, not going through history with a fine toothed comb looking for previously unrecognized sins.
The way forward is to unite people around new shared icons, like the way we deified Martin Luther King Jr. and added him to the pantheon of saints in the American civil religion rather than run Jefferson and Washington out because of their sins.
>[A]ll the available evidence indicates that exposure to difference, talking about difference, and applauding difference—the hallmarks of liberal democracy—are the surest ways to aggravate those who are innately intolerant, and to guarantee the increased expression of their predispositions in manifestly intolerant attitudes and behaviors. Paradoxically, then, it would seem that we can best limit intolerance of difference by parading, talking about, and applauding our sameness…. Ultimately, nothing inspires greater tolerance from the intolerant than an abundance of common and unifying beliefs, practices, rituals, institutions, and processes. And regrettably, nothing is more certain to provoke increased expression of their latent predispositions than the likes of “multicultural education,” bilingual policies, and nonassimilation.
As imperfect as they are, things like the U.S. national anthem unite us. Patriotism is a way for citizens to identify with their fellow countrymen regardless of their skin color, sexual orientation, religion, or other creed. That’s what we need to emphasize.
I know that it’s easier to destroy to build, to be angry rather than be understanding or tolerant, but if our country is going to move beyond these troubling times, build we must.
The quote above is taken from this article which is also quite good. when-and-why-nationalism-beats-globalism
Amen to that
I do not know what evidence you are referring to that would support the ignoring of differences to enhance unity. I think what you are referring to is that the suppression of difference enables the enforcement of conformity. Unity and the common pursuit of goals comes only with awareness and resolution of differences.
Yes Key was a man of his time, but in his time there was no shortage of wide ranging rebuttal to slavery. He clearly chose his side. While the Banner is an interesting historical artifact it is not appropriate for a national anthem.
I don’t think this is productive. Undermining every aspect of shared American identity only sharpens the divisions between us.
We need to be looking to build bridges between the different groups of our society, not going through history with a fine toothed comb looking for previously unrecognized sins.
The way forward is to unite people around new shared icons, like the way we deified Martin Luther King Jr. and added him to the pantheon of saints in the American civil religion rather than run Jefferson and Washington out because of their sins.
>[A]ll the available evidence indicates that exposure to difference, talking about difference, and applauding difference—the hallmarks of liberal democracy—are the surest ways to aggravate those who are innately intolerant, and to guarantee the increased expression of their predispositions in manifestly intolerant attitudes and behaviors. Paradoxically, then, it would seem that we can best limit intolerance of difference by parading, talking about, and applauding our sameness…. Ultimately, nothing inspires greater tolerance from the intolerant than an abundance of common and unifying beliefs, practices, rituals, institutions, and processes. And regrettably, nothing is more certain to provoke increased expression of their latent predispositions than the likes of “multicultural education,” bilingual policies, and nonassimilation.
As imperfect as they are, things like the U.S. national anthem unite us. Patriotism is a way for citizens to identify with their fellow countrymen regardless of their skin color, sexual orientation, religion, or other creed. That’s what we need to emphasize.
I know that it’s easier to destroy to build, to be angry rather than be understanding or tolerant, but if our country is going to move beyond these troubling times, build we must.
The quote above is taken from this article which is also quite good. http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/10/when-and-why-nationalism-beats-globalism/
I have long maintained that “Stairway To Heaven” is the anthem we should aspire to.
Even “racists”, slave owners and societies where slavery was legal have made significant positive contributions in all areas of human endeavor.
This is interesting historical info, much of which I was unaware. However, are the authors really suggesting that written works are only “valid” and “untainted” if they were created by politically correct people of impeccable moral character in societies with unblemished histories?
We’re talking about a SONG! Is it fundamentally “racist” simply because the author might have been a racist or might have participated in slavery? Is it “racist” simply because it was written at a time when slavery was legal in the USA?
By that logic, we should go ahead and scrap the national anthem. Then we should throw out The Constitution and Declaration of Independence too. Next, we destroy all copies of all books and music created in the USA before 1865. There obviously CAN’T be anything of value in there because it’s all tainted by the USA’s history of slavery.
Slavery was a common practice in ancient Greece and in the Roman Empire too. Let’s rid the world of any works by Plato, Socrates, Livy, Polybius, Plutarch, Euclid Herodotus, etc. They’re “tainted” by the institution of slavery in the societies of the authors. Bulldoze the Parthenon and the Roman Coliseum! Blow up the pyramids because slavery was legal in ancient Egypt and slaves helped build them.
Politically correct insanity! Can’t find enough contemporary bogeymen to criticize in order to make yourselves feel good, so dig up dirt on people who have been dead for 170 years!
I believe that that which you are addressing is the progressive left’s whole cloth condemnation and dissolution of Western Values. Its the old baby and bathwater syndrome that is deemed to be so necessary to the current advancement of those whose ancestors were purportedly victimized and then marginalized by the intrinsically racist nature of “white” institutions. Precious little is said however about the fact that slavery was a sub-Saharan tribal institution for centuries before Iberian seafarers became the mean by which the African institution of slavery was exported to the Americas (cir. 1500). Many of the sea faring Iberian traders were themselves of mixed race due to the fact that 350,000 to 400,000 African captives were transported to Spain and Portugal during the two centuries from 1440 to 1640. Considering the fact that the Iberian peninsula was already inhabited by people of mixed heritage (Berbers-Tuareg-Moors) for centuries before Iberian traders began transporting slaves to the Americas, the alleged “white European” roots of transatlantic slavery become very much a fiction of the politically progressive left.
I’m 74, black and disgusted by this vomitous display of entitled whining. Slavery was outlawed 227 years ago. The Democrat plantation was instituted 76 years ago. The Whining, Entitled, I’m Angry over Nothing movement just keeps rearing it’s ugly head.
Granny used to say “you wear the clothes you made for yourself”. If $20 million a year is “oppressed” and a bunch of ill educated, low motivated, halfwit goons think they can affect change through whining and crying, they’re as delusional as the Democrat feed bucket they eat from.
Grow up, have some self pride, make a better life, instead of demanding it from people that are already making a better life.
Pansies.
If you’re black, you’re the most clueless Uncle Tom in America. And your attitude seriously sucks.
Is that the way you spoke to Dr. King?
It’s not too late for you to learn:
“If you’re black, you’re the most clueless Uncle Tom in America.”
Don’t be racist, Doug.
The dumbest Oreo in the package?
Don’t worry. 74-yr-old black Americans don’t talk about “entitled whining” — this post is from a phony, lying, right-wing sack of shit from the Internet generation.
…because all blacks think alike, right?? Please, tell me more about how cultural differences are racially determined. No doubt, you -may- be right about Noah; but the fact that you’re -sure- you’re right exposes your racial prejudice.
Re: Don’t be racist, Doug.
Goodness! Did you try looking in a synonym dictionary for a better choice of words? The Internet Generation? My grandkids are Millennials and I’m 80.
He sounded like the billionaire serial rapist Bill Cosby to me.
And by using the term “Democrat” like the neo-Fascist right does he might be blowing his cover.
Doug, you a are pandering closet white supremacist. Because of people like you Jim Crow was the law of the land for decades.
Clearly Key is using the terms “hireling” and “slave” metaphorically, as both were contemporaneously technical terms used to binarily classify and categorize labourers: hirelings (or hireling slaves) were the laborers who worked at the mercy of capital but could “freely” change their employer and thus “elect” starvation over wage slavery; the “domestic slave” (or simply “slave”) could not freely change his “employer” as that employer was usually also his owner, on the other hand, he or she would also be immune to the “false choice” of starvation offered the “hireling.” In any case these are dichotomic labor systems, with emphasis on the latter word, as such it would make no sense for Key to be making a literal reference to them, especially since he joins the two and offers them as essentially two words for the same ignoble state or condition (a synonymous combination or tandem often seen in common law legal language), therefore it must be concluded that Key was using both terms interchangeably and/or at least redundantly emphatically with the ultimate of announcing and prophesying the fate of the enemy and especially the honor-less mercenary (“the hireling and slave) enemy of the still quite youthful (and thus, by extension, still quite “pure”) American Republic.
You may be right on this…I understand that the words were supposed to be—> “Jose can you si”
Take a joke my man…and then come into the post modern era of Objectivism and Individual Anarchy!!!
Individual Freedom and Social Liberty for all via the Fair Tax, ‘frozen’ refugees & immigration until the USA U6 unemployment number is below 5%, a wall at the Mexican border, mass deportations, renegotiated trade deals to benefit American working women and men, term limits, and a balanced budget amendment.
Oh Ya! Let’s rock the USA with growth and patriotism……
Or, you can move to Brazil…….
And now, just like the ‘N’ word, the anthem has been reappropriated. The National anthem promotes the best of America, not the worst. Why exactly are we judging a 200 year old song in a 21st century context? Historical context matters and racism was part of every day life 200 years ago as were public shooting duels.
I suppose next there will be an effort to create a new anthem, by BLM, no less.
Some 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. They were already slaves of other African tribes. Why don’t American blacks condemn their forefathers for not only practicing slavery and eating each other, but selling fellow Africans to whites and muslims?
10.7 million blacks survived the Middle Passage.
Only 388,000 came to the English colony (now the USA)
To wit: just 3.6% of black slaves shipped to the New World landed in what is now America.
Many whites came to the colonies as indentured servants. Over half didn’t survive their 7-year contracts because they were often treated worse than blacks (who, seen a life-long “investments” were so too valuable to be used draining swamps, etc.).
Also, some 3,446 blacks (and 1,297 whites!) were lynched between 1882 and 1968. That’s roughly 40 blacks hanged during an ENTIRE year (for 86) in the ENTIRE nation. This past Memorial Day weekend, 69 blacks killed other blacks in just ONE city…Chicago…over ONE weekend.
To wit: blacks killed 29 more blacks in 3 days than whites in the past killed blacks over 365.
If black lives mattered to blacks they’d stop killing each other and having 74% of their kids out of wedlock. They’d study and save and be responsible. Instead, they have “plantation mentality,” expecting prison and welfare to take care of them.
It’s the 21st century. If blacks want to keep living like it’s the early 1800s, fine. Their choice. The rest of the world is moving on.
Wasted time and a lot of words written for nothing. Our country and our anthem, you don’t like it don’t stand, don’t sing, don’t remove your hat, don’t put your hand over your heart, just continue to act like an asshole. Blame everyone and everything for being oppressed, and refuse to do anything to help. Maybe you players will realize that you are in a unique position to help your communities fight the drug dealers and thugs, bring in the business and jobs that will provide work and income for those willing to better their lives. All the big cities suffering from government imposed slavery of their minorities, have football, basketball, and baseball teams that are filled with predominantly black millionaires. Maybe instead of bitching and crying about the national anthem, these elite players can work together and use their time and resources to improve the living conditions in their team’s home town. Get off your knees and stand up for something. Help bring change instead of hate and division. Set a real example for our inner city youth. Do something that will really make a difference. You can do the club life, beat and abuse your women, use drugs and carry guns, or be the ones who are helping bring about real change, dignity, and self respect to those who want to better themselves. Do something that means something….
Ever read or hear the French national anthem translated into English?
“Let their impure blood
Soak our fields!”
…..
“Do you hear, in the countryside,
The roar of those ferocious soldiers?
They’re coming right into your arms
To cut the throats of your sons, your women!”
…
“Sacred love of the Fatherland,
Lead, support our avenging arms”
Etc.
Their anthem isn’t particularly racist (although the use of “impure blood” and “Fatherland” has echoes of well, you know..) but it sure as hell is militant, even bloodthirsty.
Yup I have and the author mentioned that the US is not the only country where this issue exists. It behooves ALL of us in ALL countries to look at our history’s and see where we can make amends, reparations and try to address the wounds of the past. Like South Africa did. Its called growing up and being mature. Kind of like when you go to therapy to figure out stuff individually, think of this as therapy for your country.
Clearly looking at your two presidential (can you say 1950s?) candidates– you need it.
Dropped by to see if any libertarian wingnuts who visit this site for the anti-war anti-NSA tinfoil hattery will realize that it’s run by race-baiting pro-jihadist and weirdly pro-Russian regressive leftists. Looks like some are starting to get it.
@Lawrence Fitton
You are proving my point for me by having to sight numerous alternate reasons why one might not want to stand for the national anthem. Personally, I refused to attend any professional sports event between the ages of 18-23 because of my opposition to the Vietnam war. Many of us who opposed the war recognized the “bread and circus” nature of professional sports at that time. As entertainers, professional athletes have a responsibility equal to that of actors to resist being used as tools of propaganda. To continue playing the game while sitting for the national anthem is akin to an actor appearing in a movie that glorifies war while wearing an antiwar t-shirt in his/her own time. Entertainers who allow themselves to be used to glorify the very system to which they allegedly take exception are nothing more than hypocrites.
As far as Jackie Robinson is concerned, he never refused to stand for the national anthem. Rather he wrote this passage in a book well after retirement:
Yes, that is right, Jackie Robinson allowed himself to be used as a tool of propaganda throughout his entire career.
Muhammad Ali actually refused to serve in the military with the understanding that it might cost him his entire career as a professional boxer. It was only by means of legally challenging his exclusion from the sport that he was able to return after several years of struggle. Although Ali was an unapologetic race separatist for the remainder of his professional career, he at least stood on principle in a manner that was totally consistent with his stated beliefs. In the end, Ali was allowed to compete professionally in spite of his radical opposition to the system at the time – what does this say about the system itself?
I think you have made a valid point in your well written article. But perhaps deliberately let it slide pass you. People need to be more educated about history and less activist. This generation has accomplished more for racial equality than any before. But that isn’t the point either and neither have anything to do with the flag or the anthem. America is a living abstract. The flag stands for the common bond between Americans and represents our commitment to each other on several basic levels. The pledge says it well and is exactly why we should be teaching children the meaning. The supremes got it wrong. No one has the right to disrespect the flag because to belongs to everyone as a reminder of our freedom and our pledge to each other that all men are created equal. Key was rightfully calling out the British, the hirelings, and the slaves. No matter who you are, what you are, where you are, if you attack and fight against America, you are the eniemy and we will seek you out and defend this country from you forever. I think you and others already know that Key wasn’t condoning slavery in the Anthem. If you and others would spend more time making the country we share better by deed, we all might have a productive discourse. But please stop participating in the bait and switch. The Flag and the Anthem are not the issue and they are distracting and further dividing us.
That’s fuggin Funny as hell the lengths you Clowns are going to in order to find succor for the Assclown, Kaepernick. Key was a Man of his time. Nothing more except he was also a witnesses and statesman. If you took every slave owner an applied todays standard on them then no one would have been saved from your acid tongues. Let’s go to the Hireling line then. Who were the “Hirelings” and why do you so ignore that? It was the BEST of Times, it was the WORST of times, you Morons…
So, this polemic is supposed to be the “truth” that our national anthem is a reflection of our collective racism? That assertion borders on the bizarre. I don’t know much about Colin, but his foolish action is a reflection of his youth and confusion about the American society. I doubt if it was Colin who thought of that stunt and I wish that journalists would try to find out the source of this tactics. They do not differ much from “occupy Wall Street” fiasco.
This article seems to be part of a campaign to make race the main issue in this election campaign, with President Obama constantly fanning the flames or racism. There has not been an incident involving an African American, that Obama has not used to accuse America of racism. But, this campaign should be about Obama’s dismal record of the last 7+ years. He has wrecked our economy, our social values, our military, and is waging an unrelenting war on organized religion. He has “changed” America for ever through his one man “open door” immigration policy. He has greatly diminished our standing tin the world, and is primarily responsible for the chaos in the Middle East through his “spreading of Democracy” around the world. With a major defeat on the horizon for the Democrats, they are turning towards the race card to distract attention from those issues.
We are now teaching history like a communist revision class….it’s see how you can misapply American History to undermine all the institutions that moved this country forward and upward…….Maybe we should rename the Star Spangled Banner Mao’s revenge…?
When my white Irish ancestors were made slaves, was it racist? There is nothing inherently racist about slavery. People with an agenda are injecting it in hopes to fuel hatred. This dead horse is way overused.
Ah, the “Irish slaves” fantasy. A favorite at Stormfront, with anti-BLM racists and with certain Irish politicians and others who want to obscure Irish involvement in the real slave trade.
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/04/19/how-myth-irish-slaves-became-favorite-meme-racists-online
I don’t see the problem here. Claiming we aren’t “facing our past” because we don’t use the third verse of our anthem anymore seems absurd. Let’s continue to not use it, it’s hardly even really part of the anthem we generally ever hear, anyway. It’s OK to let controversial old things rest without getting re-inflamed.
Furthermore, the lyrics in question certainly do violently address slaves. But in that era, if Britain had been successful enough in those seditious strategies, we might have lost our independence. We briefly lost the White House in that war. So I see it as cheering the failed plans of the enemy and punishing the deserters more than wittingly racist. In war, death and fright is what comes to your enemy, lest it visits you instead.
Just stick to the first verse like every normal person does and let old peculiar poems remain powerless for stirring up modern outrage.
More nattering from the termites.
Jon, couldn’t you leave well enough alone after your last Kaepernick article, without dragging Jefferson into the fray? LOL!
Didn’t you get enough response from the wasps from knocking the hive from the rafters last time?
I hope you’re happy exposing Francis Scott Key for being the douche bag he was.
One last thing… Would it be so bad to have another totally different national anthem that was NOT pro war or pro slavery? ‘Oh Canada’ sounds so peaceful when you hear it before the start of a hockey game.
Compared to our blood-soaked, un-singable affront to decency and musicality, O’ Canada is a gentle lullaby.
The lyrics contain gender stereotypes and frequent calls for support from a supreme being, but no bloodlust or savagery.
We should definitely consider a replacement. And, if they insist on playing and singing the new anthem at sporting events, the color guard should be, oh, maybe gardeners, taxi drivers and nurses — none of them carrying weapons.
Canada’s anthem was recently revised and is now gender neutral. The process was relatively smooth, in part as a tribute to a respected Member of Parliament that took the issue on as his last effort before dying of ALS.
Thanks. I didn’t know that, obviously. I remember singing about “stalwart sons and fair maidens.”
I should also say that “O’ Canada” is simply better music than “The Blood-Soaked Flag.”
My response to the article is: so what? Notwithstanding your tendentious characterization of Key’s performance of his duties as a prosecutor, Key is not the national anthem, he is its author. If we cannot separate the deed from the man, then there is no such thing as a good deed.
And the verse in question is *not* part of the national anthem.
We always knew our anthem had some dark undertones in additional stanzas, which is usually why we don’t sing them. In fact many don’t even acknowledge them.
It’s too bad there is such a separatist movement going on now with sensationalist stories like this. I would think coming together in spite of the past would heal better than dwelling on it. I guess I never got a time machine like these “journalists” did.
I am done with this website, The Intercept has never created an objective perspective to this anti American thinking which means the Intercept is agenda based. Enjoy your Black Lives matters nut job readers whom express that white people should be killed publicly the same way the New Black Panthers said white babies should be exterminated.
GO [email protected])K yourself you country dividing racist and do us all a favor and leave the country Jon Schwarz. Also, in my opinion the Left wants to change this document because it has the word GOD in it and not Slaves.
Another Invasion of the Mouth-Breathers. Dumb and mean is such a bad look.
Ah, another good objection! Thanks for pointing it out.
IMFO, an ad hominem response!! Doug, I suggest you commit to some self reflection because you’re the mouth-breather in this conversation.
Here’s my response to your ad hominem, you’re a like a Pi$$ant (that’s worse then a wanker because at least a wanker is jerking off). OH YEAH AND GET A JOB YOU WELFARE SLAVE!
Now it’s your turn.
Hope this improved your way of thinking Doug. It’s time you did some self reflection and learn to help yourself before you help others or make others help you.
God Bless you Doug.
I hope you get the point that insolting
Bye Bye
Goodbye Jerry. Now you can go back to any number of Mainstream Media’news’ websites that merely regurgitate what they are spoonfed from the U.S. Gov or the U.S. corporate states of America.
BTW, how did you ever come across TI? Doesn’t sound like the type of website that says things you’d like to hear.
Jerry, no one cares that you’re done with this website. Ya big dummy. Facts are facts.
“I am done with this website.” I hope you’re not like the others. I will hold you in my heart, promise-keeper.
K’ Bye!!
Don’t forget to ask for your money back!
Great! don’t let the door hit you on the way out– bye bye!
Never have I seen so much effort going to prove a point so convoluted and ultimately vague. If you really feel that a 20,000 word narrative is necessary to prove the national anthem is racist you either need a real job or probably a subject with more concrete evidence. Even if correct the word that best accompanies the headlines assertion is “might” or more appropriately “maybe”. This is too much time trying to convince too many people about something with little in the way of tangibles. Interesting exercise but it’s little more than an emotional ploy.
And how many time has anyone even sung the offending verse?
Get over your butt hurt liberalism you bunch of weirdo’s!!
Seems to me, so many people these days are committing a sin as big as racism and owning slaves: they engage in presentism, and judge people by today’s standards instead of the world those people lived in.
Tell me, how can someone claim Key is a racist, when he voluntarily freed slaves who he owned and worked for him, who then chose to continue working for him as free men? Wouldn’t a racist keep them as slaves?
Liberal activists, the liberal MSM, and government school employees all want to engage in racist victimhood and demand government favors because of it, over 150 years after a Republican emancipated the slaves. And they want to be able themselves to discriminate against those they believe are racists. Their real problem, is they believe their liberal leaders that 1/4 of the USA is racist. Yep, we’re getting a lot of black and liberal racists these days who want to shut up others by taking away their freedom of speech, like slave owners did to slaves long ago, with the government behind them.
we have three chooses 1 change the anthem (maybe, to we shall over come) 2 ignore all this silliness and kapey will go away, 3 (I kind of like this one ) start shooting each other.
Yet another doppelganger comment
Please choose #1 like we Canadians did (our anthem is now gender neutral) because if you do #3 unfortunately we will get caught in the cross-fire
Wonderful article. Thanks for sharing. In this era of “Making America Great Again” and states literally trying to erase slavery from textbooks calling the slaves “immigrant workers”… this is a constant reminder that America never was great to people of color.
Tell me, if you were a member of a tribe in Africa, and you went to war against a competing tribe who then captured you, would you rather be sold as a slave or just killed? Tell me, who’s treating who badly here. Are slave traders helping these people or not?
Also tell me, if you went into debt you couldn’t pay 200 years ago, would you rather live in debtor’s prison, or work as a slave for your creditor until you paid him back? That was the law back then. There was a time when your promise to pay someone back, was enforced by government.
Also tell me, exactly how did America’s treatment of “people of color” compare to other country’s treatment of “people of color”? Here’s what I found regarding the destination of slaves taken from Africa:
Portuguese America (modern Brazil) 38.5%
British America (minus North America) 18.4%
Spanish Empire 17.5%
French Americas 13.6%
British North America 6.45%
English Americas 3.25%
Dutch West Indies 2.0%
Danish West Indies 0.3%
Looks like America was far from the worst nation or race involved in slavery. And why the big deal about slavery in the US, when it still exists in many countries? http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/colour-slavery-2013112483045927138.html or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery#Modern_times Heck, blacks owned slaves in the US long ago.
Like Frederick Douglass, the black former slave argued in 1860, “I, on the other hand, deny that the Constitution guarantees the right to hold property in man, and believe that the way to abolish slavery in America is to vote such men into power as well use their powers for the abolition of slavery.” He believed the freedom the Constitution defends and holds dear, also applied to black people and was an instrument designed to abolish slavery. That is contrary to your statement that “America never was great to people of color.” http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-constitution-of-the-united-states-is-it-pro-slavery-or-anti-slavery/
How can what you say be true, if a black former slave in 1860 disagrees with you? And when not only whites were slave owners, but blacks were slave owners as well? http://www.ironbarkresources.com/slaves/whiteslaves05.htm http://conservative-headlines.com/2012/03/americas-first-slave-owner-was-a-black-man/
Was it the USA treating people of color badly, or was slavery a common practice in the world then? You’re guilty of the sin of presentism, judging people of long ago according to today’s standards. It’s just almost as bad as racism, except those who you disparage are dead and cannot defend themselves.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear.” – Cicero
To all Americans who value the freedom and liberty we enjoy that lives were given to provide for us I urge you all to resist the subtle, creeping attempts to destroy the sovereignty of out nation.
Cicero was a prissy thug who justified the murder of the Gracchis because they deigned to act in the interests of the majority rather than the landed elite of Rome’s patrician class, and personally attended the murder of political enemies on other occasions. When Mark Antony had him cut down, he got what he deserved.
His career demonstrates the absurdity of his position: “nations” are a BS reification, and there is no such thing as the national interest. There is only class war, turf war, and cabals and cliques and sectional interests elbowing for their perch at the top of the shit-pile, but when you point that out the types who want their interests to be considered the “national” interest (and idiot worldview to be considered the national “culture”) they will accuse you of treason (or just do so if your interests do not accord with theirs and you impertinently insist they be given the same regard). It doesn’t matter if it’s called patriotism or nationalism, it always the same dangerous nonsense; a stick for the state to beat you with, on behalf of the people running it.
I remain heartily amused by people who think “love of country” is not only a rational concept let alone a rational act, and more that it is somehow praiseworthy, and more that it is praiseworthy when expressed entirely through the veneration of empty symbols like anthems and flags.
For the record, I’m not an American. And while I obviously (see above) shouldn’t say I’m proud of that… well, y’all know how it is.
What a long way of saying “I like to make shit up because reasons.”
The NFL needs to adopt a personnel rule prohibiting these type of political demonstrations. Other sports teams do and the general rule in private corporations is that you can get fired for proselytizing during work hours. That right snowflakes their is no absolute right to free speech on private property if it is prohibited by your employer.
Absolute baloney. The writer, who must be a Democrat, is making something out of nothing. It is time for Americans to stand up and fight the Anti-American Democrats. This “racism” crap is just that: crap.
That’s your idea of a cogent, thorough rebuttal, huh, “Doctor.” Well, sorry that reality chafes your good ol’ boy sensibilities.
I see, elsewhere, that you describe yourself as specializing in psychotherapy, Don. Did you know that using titles of respect for oneself — e.g., “Dr.” — when they are utterly irrelevant to the situation or subject at hand is a symptom of narcissistic personality disorder?
Further, did you know that spouting nonsense like the above is proof positive that a poster is, at least, pathetically ignorant and, quite likely, an unrepentant, half-bright racist, to boot?
Now, go away, have a nice day, and try not to fuck up any patients, if you can help it.
You’re starting to see the truth Dr. Don Rhudy. The left is attacking this document to weaken our great free country. The left is full of self hating piss ants who grew up rich or upper middle class who didn’t start working until after university. The left is also full of racists i.e. the New Black Panthers who said they want to kill all white babies!?! and Black Lives Matter supporters who publicly post on twitter that they want to execute white people!!
Christopher is probably one of the rich white citizens I mentioned above. So you can automatically discredit him because his opinion has been implanted by people who hate this country who teach our children about Socialism.
Doug on the other hand is a racist. You can tell by the way he has somehow come up with “proof” that you’re racist from a sentence that is not racist at all. In his mind your a white man that is evil, not because your a man or that you do bad things, rather he thinks this because he assumes your white. you could be Asian or African but Doug wont see that because he’s a institutionalized Leftist Racist that has become exactly what he hates.
You said you were “done with this website.”
How can we miss you if you won’t go away?
Doug, he’s like those dirty two pennies you just can’t seem to get rid of. Until they stop production of the penny (like Canada), we’ll just have to deal with his meaningless 2 cents (noncents).
this old heart of mine, been broke a thousand times. Jerry, I thought you were different.
Go on, beat it, I don’t love you anymore Jerry, just get out of here. (crying) bad dog, bad dog!
It’s always “something out of nothing” when it doesn’t negatively impact you. It is something. A big something! And it needs to be addressed.
Wow, I had no idea how much America sucks. It is not worth saving IMO.
When will we all learn? One cannot befriend a snake. As a young man I was somewhat naive and often trusted someone who was rather left leaning. I learned quickly it not the thing to do.
Colin should have known better but then again the Clinton’s are crafty snakes.
Note: Does anyone remember the time Newt Gingrich teamed up w/ Nancy Pelosi to promote the effort to fight global warming? He got burned on that one as well.
Slavery ended in America in 1865. Wow, the Jews must still be protesting and rioting from the 6 million killed and enslaved in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Oh wait, they’re not?
No. Jews are not complaining lol. They already killed most of the Naz’si during the Nuremburg trials and hunted most of the remaining down, and anytime they do find one, they send em to jail or give em a death sentence (some of the scientists did get scott off). They literally eradicated the Nazi’s from the face of the planet. In return, they were also given a country to squat in, mind you a country that already had an indigenous people yearning for their own freedom and independence (they had fought with the Brits against their former Turkish masters, only to be betrayed, servers them right for thinking the Brits were ever honest folk). I can ‘t imagine, analogously, black people ever “getting back” against white America or hunting down white Americans, or any of their former oppressors and eradicating them. Not advocating for anything and I qualify all statements against generalizing all Jews or all blacks, or all white americans for that matter, just making a point. But I like how you can generalize race arguments, “Jew’s aren’t, blacks are”
Brilliant retort! I am sure it went well over their head
The Land of the Fleeced and Home of the Blade. “All good things must come to an end, ” as the poet says.
The libertarian shrug toward “sex work” is pitiful. “In 1833, Key tried to shut down the capital’s “bawdy houses,” the popular female-run brothels that served both white and black customers. (A glance at 20-plus pages of “escort” advertisements in today’s D.C. Yellow Pages indicates that Key failed to stamp out sex work in Washington.) ”
Tee hee!
Maybe when we leave behind hireling-for-work labor that migrants and women do we can also leave behind prostitution that migrants, women, and LGBT do. There is a cultural trend toward less purchasing of sex when the client-only model is used (eg. Sweden), and a biological trend of increased infection and abuse of people — especially women — when the brothels are encouraged (eg. New Zealand, Nevada etc).
Great article otherwise. Please stop giving marginalized people HIV through “sex work” it’s not cool.
Some people have been taught to see everything through the prism of racism. They feel that their (supposed) lack racist sentiments make them morally superior to everyone else. Kind of like vegetarians or feminists or people who recycle garbage.
Football is a game and part of the America Media Industrial Complex. This fellow has contracts totaling over a hundred million dollars for playing football and he doesn’t even play that often. So he is getting paid to sit on a bench.
Meanwhile in other news . . .
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-12/tent-cities-full-homeless-people-are-booming-cities-all-over-america-poverty-spikes
If America were the ‘land of the free’, then everyone would be free to choose their own version of the national anthem. This might make the pregame anthem a bit cacophonous however, so it’s probably for the better that they are not free. If the anthem is allowed to tell outright lies, I don’t see why a bit of racism should be disqualifying. An anthem represents a country; the Star Spangled Banner seems to fit the bill.
No. But president Obama says the hirelings and slaves still have “the right” to protest this one.
(personally, I think the phrase ‘star spangled’ … is a bit out-dated.)
*Imo, one should be mindful that during this period of American history few people could even read and write. And those that could were often quite luxurious with both tongue and pen.
Suppose a communist president, such as Mr. Obama, were to declare:
A crowd of 100,000 all chanting the same words seems a bit fascist. It would be an interesting experiment to see what liberty looked like, providing it was confined to 2 minutes before a football game. Some people would say this could plant a dangerous seed and start a slide down the slippery slope towards freedom.
They are absolutely right, so I withdraw the suggestion.
Literally LOL! @ “Anthems should be two stanzas or less because writing a third stanza is always a mistake”
Oh and I’ve been waiting to use this word for a long time now:
What a disorienting and cacaphonous experience/idea… to hear 100 000 chanting different words and out of tune.
Yikes!
cacaphonous
The people pushing this agenda are anti-American scum. To hell with the,.
Let’s not forget that the United States was formed in a world awash in slavery, oppression and despotism.
It was the United States of America that brought about the change that eventually peaked in a civil war and ended the slave trade to the new world.
Not to recognize and appreciate this is a character flaw.
Total bullxshit. Your facts are distorted and unproven. And the fact that you think that you could interpret the hearts and minds of individuals from 200 years ago using your myopic ideology of today proves your articles are unworthy of serious discussion. That goes for the imbeciles commenting here about their support of your ignorance.
Total bullxshit.
So whats next,She really didnt buy a Stairway To Heaven ?
There was no racist intent… It makes sense that he speaking of the American military since the American military was being attacked…the entire song is about the Flag surviving a horrific onslaught by England…not the prowess of the American Military…the idea that he was saying the English forces (slave or otherwise) were somehow destroyed is ludicrous…it is much more likely…its almost beyond question that Key was putting forward the idea that even though the Americans took a tremendous beating that night the Flag still stood…for him to do an about face in the middle of the song and speak of Some kind of American victory does not fit the overall theme of the entire song…
Why do your ilk insist on digging up the parts of the past you hate, and burying and dissembling and destroying the parts that give us our liberties enjoyed by all? You have destroyed the first and the the fourth, and are hard at work on the second. The fifth also. What do you think will be left when you are done? My ancestors from Iowa died like flies in the Civil War, WW1, WW2. Never owned anyone. Wow. Just Wow. You are not worth the air that you breathe.
Abysmal poetry, teamed with the absolute nadir of music, synergistically combining to form the epitome of a national anthem.
Aye, that’s the real rub, isn’t it? Even if you strip the anthem of its historical baggage and judge it on the merits of technique… It’s still a bad choice.
What do the undertones of Key’s poem have to do with Kaepernick’s protest?? Is a critical analysis of a 200+ year old poem considered ‘news’ these days?
Its soros and pro-globalist government paid for psy-ops to make the sheeple question everything. They do this with the constitution too and our founding fathers. They basically take any respected institution and viciously destroy it without a shred of fairness or context.
I am unfamiliar with the Intercept, but it appears to be an un American pile of crap intended to stir up trouble.
Well said mein Fuhrer
It is so obvious that the federal government was racist. Just look at the 3/5ths clause. The only solution is to eliminate the federal government.
Amazing, a whole article devoted to proving that someone involved in our founding history was , and cover your ears now…
“a slave owner”!!!
Mabye we should refuse to venerate the “US Constitution” and the “Bill of Rights”?
Those have slave owner hands all over them, you will never be able to wash that stink off them, right?
Let me guess, you think I’m being dramatic?
Because the current rampage of leftist revision against US history will never extend to dishonoring America’s founding fathers?
Sorry, it’s already happening.
In San Francisco, the School Board President is currently trying to adopt policy that will allow all schools named for “slave owners’ to pick other.
Schools in question:
Washington.
Jefferson.
Considering we just went from transgenderism being a ridiculed mental illness to a celebrated identity and a fundamental right within 5 years time, I would say that within less than 2 years, politicians will be openly talking about renaming all public institutions or geographic locations named for any and all historical slaveholders.
Right up to George Washington.
Are you brave. Are you free. If your an American I hope you realize you can share those values. I’m a veteran. I stand for the anthem because many of us paid for that right.
Kaepernick’s still a douche.
Why do I have a sudden urge to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
Jealous!
The 3rd verse was not “racist” at all in intent, it meant something entirely different than liberals believe who try to pervert its meaning.
It should also be noted that the British didn’t abolish slavery until decades after the war of 1812. They were just looking for leverage. I highly doubt they would have freed slaves if it didn’t aid their own war effort.
https://theintercept.com/2016/08/28/colin-kaepernick-is-righter-than-you-know-the-national-anthem-is-a-celebration-of-slavery/
If Key was talking about escaped slaves who fought on the British side in the War of 1812, then “hireling and slave” can be taken literally as history. Americans could still remember the notorious Hessian mercenaries who fought for the British in the American Revolution. I don’t see how stating the truth could be construed as a “celebration” of anything.
He’s not protesting the National Anthem. He’s protesting the nonexistent oppression.
Tough cookies. Get over it. Deal with today. Be an American or be something else, decide what it is, and get the hell out. We have enough present day problems without baby tantrums about what happened 200 years ago. Gimme a friggin’ break. Grow up.
Another aspect of Francis Scott Key’s milieu is that
he was Roger B. Taney’s brother-in-law.
Chief Justice Taney believed that blacks were never meant to be
U.S. citizens and this was the basis of his court’s decision in
regard to Dred Scott’s plead for justice. Taney also believed
the “Missouri Compromise” was unconstitutional – as it sought
to limit the spread of slavery.
My brother-in-law is a complete jerk weed and I have absolutely nothing to do with him. What’s your point?
Stand by for the relevant point….
The interpretation you give is disputed. This version is currently popular, but it is not solid. Going on at length with progressively weaker arguments is revealing.
My guess is you agreed with CK’s POV beforehand, and have devoted a great deal of energy to confirmatory evidence. That is what human beings usually do, so I’m already on the plus side for my guess. My theory is strengthened by the absence of consideration of other possibilities – the mark of a crusader rather than a truth-seeker.
The National Anthem is tainted with racism. Yes, fact. Why don’t the authors really stir the pot and mention the anti-white racism spewed out by the hip-hop-Hollywood entertainment industry?
O.K. so it has the word Slave,,,, it doesnt have anything to do with slavery! Hell I have a slave cylinder on my car and it doesnt have anything to do with slavery either!
P.S. Here’s more about Francis Scott Key’s efforts to disposses Native Americans of their land, in alliance with Andrew Jackson:
http://alabamapioneers.com/francis-scott-key-visited-alabama-1833/
The following was written in 1901, and is rather tellingingly honest about motivations and agendas.
The details of this story seem to indicate a picture in which poor whites tried to rush into seize Indian lands before the big slave-holding plantation owners could stake their claims, so Francis Scott Key was sent down with Federal troops to drive the poor whites off the Indian land, to make way for plantation expansions, is how I read it:
“Francis Scott Key was sent to Alabama in 1833 to solve a serious problem with Indians”
This is the kind of race-ideology of “Manifest Destiny” of the Great White Race so common in late 19th/early 20th century thinking, the mentality of President Woodrow Wilson, the KKK, and many popular writers of the era. Native Americans were to be driven off their land onto reservations, freed blacks were to be permanent second-class servants and fieldworkers, and the Chinese imported to work on railroad construction were to be used and discarded. Some more ugly, ugly history.
This problem has still not been overcome, as the ongoing Black Lives Matter and Dakota Access Pipeline controversies demonstrate.
Michael Jackson was a child molester and Prince & Jimmy Hendrix died drug addicts so therefore everything else they did is garbage…….Right???
This was great!!!
Educational read, once again.
More like edutainment for idiots. You just take their word for all of this rubbish and never would think to research it to see if they cherry picked.
Excellent, fascinating stuff. Everyone should be happy to be getting a decent education about one of the more distorted episodes in American history. This story can be expanded even further, however – another major feature of the War of 1812 was the conflict with Native Americans, who were allied with runaway slaves:
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James Loewen:
This is a central issue that is still glossed over, but has repercussions to this day – just look at the current struggle over the Dakota Access Pipeline between oil and pipeline interests and Native Americans, which has been making headlines in many news outlets, for good reason:
Here we also see a close cooperation between runaway slaves and Native American tribes who were united by their opposition to the land-grabbing slave-owning plantation operators who made up the power structure of the South:
In this context, isn’t it interesting to see Black Lives Matter members supporting the Native American groups over the Dakota Pipeline issue? A replay of history, in many ways:
http://fusion.net/story/346460/black-lives-matter-fighting-alongside-dakota-access-pipeline-protesters/
The Magna Carta was the result of a dispute between King John & his Barons. The common man was of no concern to anyone at the time. Only three of the sixty-three rules the Magna Carta put into place were not repealed. The person behind the Magna Carta was Pope Innocent III, who put together the nastiest Jew baiting council, Lateran IV, since the first millennium ended. Pope Innocent III issued a bull annulling the Magna Carta as soon as King John acted in a more congenial fashion towards the Church. Notwithstanding these facts, we still revere the document.
The lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner, as currently sung, do not support slavery in any way. Let be.
You do, I don’t
Why do we hide facts to prove America is racist. Let us say that Key was thinking of that unit of black soldiers who faught with tht British to gain their freedom. What about the many black US soldiers who fought in the same war? Will we not mention them. Key most likely owned slaves, but how is he a rascist when he includes the black soldiers as those in home of the brave.
Let me just say that this site is the only one “shedding light on the Star-Spangled Banner”, but while you point out these negroe slaves that defected over to the British, you forget the black soldiers who fought on the US side because they loved America. When Key writes about the home of the brave he knew about those negroes who served their country.
I really care not about its history, all that I know is that it celebrates the bombast of war.
Perhaps to quell the bombast and exaltation content a bit, someone might put “Dulce et Decorum Est”, or Randall Jarrell’s “Death of a Ball Turret Gunner” to music, and call it a national anthem.
After all, what could be more rousing to the true patriot, than ” Gas, Quick boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling…” or
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Nice, straightforward, like a hymn.
“And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” works quite well in this capacity too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ptL52YCUY8&list=RD-ptL52YCUY8
Will you and all the experts please move to another country
Whether we’re talking about Grayson or Holmes, one thing is abundantly clear: the United States was not founded by whites … it was founded by Vogons!
Funny.
Doug quoting Karl
Doug, Karl is a fact-allergic wingnut, and especially hostile to Black Lives Matter and detests all complaints about America’s continued raical inequality. Like any number of his types where the national antehm is concerned, he tosses in bullshit about “deconstructionism,” because he wants that stanza to be about impressed white Americans. But “deconstructiomism” has zero to do with the hermeutics of this stanza:
As the above article says:
To which Karl and othr wingnutes just spew: “Argle bargle, deconstructionsism, blah, blah, racially divisiave, deconstructionsim, argle bargle.”
All the way to the top of the thread..! tell me the truth Mona, you want me in the worst way, don’t you?
All ya got, eh? Good.
What about those black soldiers in US army at the time.
The anthem is a symbol of our national identity ritualized at every sporting event. Of course its history, its words, its author, and its over-all meaning are important and worth debating. “Shut up and sing” is for people who can’t face history and can’t face the truth.
A larger question: why did the Congress in 1931 choose an anthem that originates from and represents pre-Civil War America? We failed to recover from the Civil War, and to embrace its results honestly. I am reading a great book on this topic by David W. Blight: “Race and Reunion: the Civil War in American Memory.”
Thanks for some great journalism.
Well said!
It’s a great follow-up article, Mr Schwarz and Mr Morley.
Let me add my perspective here: when I thought about the fact that I was born about ninety years after the Civil War, I realized how very young the US is.
We have made a lot of mistakes. In some cases, we haven’t gone far enough and in others we’ve gone too far too quickly.
My statement is factual.
You obviously don’t understand the difference between a fact and an opinion.
Jon, you have started a REVOLUTION… of sorts…. making people THINK and REFLECT… .. BIG THANKS to Colin Kaepernick! Keep doing what you are doing…. no matter what…. the only way to change things for the better.
I likw some versions of that song. Well one version at least.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKvnQYFhGCc
I’m still trying to sell my rewrite, I think it goes well with the Jimi Hendrix instrumental:
Superb!!!!!!!
Bravo!
WOW, fabulous– do you mind if I sing that at the next ball game? : )
Virtually all of this diatribe is based on the third stanza!? And then to grope around Key’s background and life story to fit the racist narrative!? Clearly, you guys have little to no insight into what the anthem and flag stand for: an emblem of a people striving to appeal to our better nature. As I see it, therefore, to protest the anthem and the flag is to protest against hope.
Well! We certainly couldn’t permit that! Even if the assertion made the slightest bit of sense.
Oh, thank you for that “better nature” line, lovely:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksBZ5EPuXPM
Quite obviously, many of our politicians have gone insane – very much so, obviously insane.
The article is severely vitiated with the glowing Obama coda. For it is Obama whose relentless drone war that he so prides himself as “being good at killing,” whose support for the Saudis indiscriminate strafing of Yemen and who is about to veto the JASTA bill that will get to the root of their 9/11 sponsorship.
A far different lesson can be drawn from Obama’s words that he did indeed make his peace with power…
By the way, Thomas Jefferson, who along with Andrew Jackson is the Democratic party icon, was not only a very cruel slave master, he further envisioned expanding slavery as the model manufacturing after he exited the Presidency. See Jefferson’s history also with Benjamin Banneker arguing that not all men are created equal. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/?no-ist https://www.facinghistory.org/nobigotry/readings/created-equal
“whose relentless drone war that he so prides himself as “being good at killing,” ”
Ya gotta give credit to talent, where credit is due. The Nobel committee did.
To hold ages past to our updated virtue signaling standards seems like there is an agenda here.
What’s with the racism bit?Isn’t this kind of close minded? Only our age is correct?
Didn’t Disraeli the famously Semitic Prime Minister of Great Britain have one of his characters(he wrote novels) say “All is Race, there is no other truth?”
Yeah…here it is:
“All is race, there is no other truth”
https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary…
What did Lou Reed say?
Those were different days(Sweet Jane)
Pack your bags! We are going on a Guilt trip!!
What a gross load of anti-American blind hogwash! I don’t dispute the authors facts. See how far the USA has come over the last 200 years.
That is what makes America Great, we can change, albeit slowly.
Colin Kaepernick has the constitutional right to protest. What is amazing is that the 49ers, ESPN, and the NFL endorse it. Most folks can be fired for saying innocuous things on Facebook, because it detracts from their employers corporate image.
OH, I believe in the initial Colin Kaepernick interview, he also said Hellary should be in jail, but no mention of that here.
History is just history, it isn’t “pro-American” or “anti-American” – and the people who try to distort history to serve their sleazy political agendas, be they liberals or conservatives, elitists or populists, are just a bunch of Orwellian con artists trying to stake a claim on the past in order to control the future.
Real history is complicated, ugly, beautiful, inspiring, shameful – the record of individual actions, from the best of humanity to the worst of humanity – but it never, ever fits a modern political narrative, that’s for sure.
Those historians who try to respin history to serve modern political agendas, there’s a special place in hell reserved for them, somewhere down in the Lower Circles – I’m guessing here:
http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/circle8a.html
The technical description for a piece like this is “damned fine work!” In fact, it can hardly be done more elegantly or proficiently.
Bravo, Mr. Morley and Jon!
Here here!!!!
The folks who insist that the national anthem isn’t racist are an expression of the same force that buried (and hurriedly tries to rebury whenever the shape becomes apparent despite the previous efforts at burying) the racism (and oligarchyism) that the US was founded on, shaped by, and continues to be haunted by.
I now have a further understanding of the rudeness and sometimes contempt that I often encounter at the border as a white Canadian hireling crossing into the land of the free.
I intend to watch carefully to identify the commercial concerns that attempt to punish those that have the courage to confront this fine example of entrenched conservative perspective.
I’ll be looking for a 49ers’ jersey with Kaepernick’s number on it!!
Here you go:
http://www.nflshop.com/Colin_Kaepernick_San_Francisco_49ers_Men_Jerseys/Mens_San_Francisco_49ers_Colin_Kaepernick_Nike_Scarlet_Game_Jersey
I understand it’s the most popular of all NFL Jerseys, at the moment.
Yes, isn’t it amazing how Colin Kaepernick has tapped into the Soros funded, BlackLivesMatter disseminated racially divisive narrative in a way that has instantaneously enhanced his brand. I have to hand it to him, this was an extremely astute way for a second string quarterback to enhance his own brand recognition from the bench. “Divisiveness sells” ought to be his corporate motto:
Takeaway: What We Learned from Colin Kaepernick and Russell Wilson’s Big Bet
http://rocketpost.com/blog/takeaway-what-we-learned-from-kaepernick-and-wilsons-big-bet/
That is ahistorical nonsense. Black athletes who protest lose everything from endrosements to entertainment gigs. It’s always been that way. Examples are legion, from the athletes who gave the Black Power salute at the ’68 Olympics and were expelled from the Games, to Mohammed Ali who was kicked out of professional boxing for years.
After that, for decades black athletes seldom if ever protested, some admitting they didnt want to pay the price. Indeed, when he was playing Michael Jordan was asked why he wasn’t political and stated: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”
Mr. Kaepernick and those following suit are very brave and principled men and women.
I’ve seen celebrities do a lot of things to get famous and to stay in the news after, and not many of them were as worthwhile as this.
Great follow-up piece Mr. Morley and Mr. Schwarz.
Until slavery, one of the greatest moral sins on the soul of America (of which there are many and not to diminish the many others) is meaningfully grappled with as a nation, I really don’t see how this nation ever truly “progresses” or solves any of the meaningful problems it faces today.
It takes a strong nation with moral clarity and certainty to openly admit it has wronged its own people, or the non-domestic objects of its foreign policies, and to seek forgiveness and reconciliation.
I guess I’m still the dumb kid I’ve always been down deep that I believed it was possible to realize MLK Jr.’s “dream” in my lifetime. Even though I know in my heart we are still so far away from its realization.
Nevertheless, I still get choked up when I hear it or read it, because we are still fighting that fight in so many ways.
This nation still has a very long way to go to realize that “dream”. But it’s a dream worth fighting for, every day, whenever and wherever we see injustice rear its ugly head.
The thesis of this whole article is utter bullshit from beginning to end. It does nothing but mirror the faddish linguistic deconstructionism and historical revisionism of the progressive left that are essential to their anachronistic postmodern reconstructions of Black history in America. While the author readily acknowledges that there is no sure way to know what Key meant by the phrase, “hireling and slave”, he nevertheless uses the most racially divisive interpretation of the phrase to advance his own equally flawed thesis that [white] Americans are incapable of coming to terms with their TRUE history. How about writing an article that focuses on how African American music, fashion, and culture have become an integral element of mainstream American culture in just the last fifty years. Or on how the integration of black athletes into American professional sports leveraged their integration into other spheres of American mainstream culture. Or on how the evolution of publicly expressed racial attitudes of African American athletes have radically transformed American society since the days of Jackie Robinson, or even more recently since the days of Muhammad Ali. Or on how African American athletes are currently wrapping themselves in the American Flag in post-victory celebrations at the 2016 Olympic games?
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, gave a shit about an unknown third stanza reference to slaves in the American anthem but a second string, brand conscious pro athlete. For Pete sake, get real!!! I would have far more respect for Colin Kaepernick if he was addressing the problem of black-on-black violence that is so endemic in African American culture.
And, so, it comes down to this: the now-standard talking point dragged out repeatedly, by racists who think we can’t recognize their racism, to buttress their lame arguments that racism isn’t a problem.
Sorry, Bubba. We see you.
It is a wonderful culture that allows African American professional athletes to stand-up and speak the truth:
Ray Lewis Is Right, Black on Black Violence Not A Myth! Reaction to Black Lives Matter CNN Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGhy3C-Ip8M
Of course it’s not a myth. Nor is white-on-white violence, nor husband-on-wife violence, nor Asian-on-Asian violence, etc.
For some odd reason, humans, like other animals, tend to have interactions, including violent ones, with their neighbors. And (also for “some reason”) black people in America tend to live, mostly, near other black people.
Also, poor and oppressed and frustrated and angry folks tend to act out violently more often than comfortable people in pleasant circumstances and with a broad range of privileges and opportunities. Go figure.
Go see if the Clueless Troglodyte Talking Point Exchange has a new pitch available. This one is old and tired.
Yes, but African Americans “tend to act out violently” in disproportionate numbers. This is why Ray Lewis takes pointed exception to the hate filled, race-centric, racially decisive, and culturally myopic narrative of BlackLives Matters. It is that same type of bias that is fueling this brand-building faux controversy.
So let’s kill every black in Chicago because that project is way behind schedule because we have blacks doing the work and blacks are notoriously undependable, even at killing their own people.
And I’m the racist?
That would be a pretty damned good bet.
We see Bubba very clearly. Geez why don’t these guys ever mention the fact that Mr. Kaepernick gave $1M to social groups addressing issues in the back community. Is that enough to address that problem Bubba??
No Karl, it is a good article. The bs is all yours, and what a marvelous pile it is.
WORD!!! (from another “uncle Tom”)
Shaq on Colin Kaepernick’s National Anthem Protest: ‘I Would Never Do That’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIN8-NV8WdA
Now is Shaq “right” or “wrong” for giving voice to his own opinion?
Shaq is right.
Colin should be informed of all the injustices going on in society on Day 1. And Colin should take a stance that wont change throughout his career in the NFL, if not his entire life.
Yeah.. that sounds reasonable. Thats how we humans are.
I hope that my cynical view of his actions are proven wrong in time. However, the love of money, same, and success always has a funny way of negatively informing ones opinions and actions.
jackie robinson said, he couldn’t stand for, or sing the anthem. muhammad ali said, no viet cong ever called me nigger.
the 3rd stanza of the anthem was mostly unknown. you prefer it remain that way. fine. but not all want to bury heads in the sand.
the rise of an american police state – and a long history of police racism(most especially in the south) – is a worthy cause of protest. less trigger happy cops make us all safer.
protest is patriotic. protest seeks change where change is needed.
pledges of allegiance to flags and symbols; rituals of obedience to the state; jingoistic national anthems, all are characteristics of totalitarian regimes.
how or why the anthem is a part of sporting events, i don’t know. i don’t see the need. and the glorification of the military at sporting events is definitely a worrying trend.
there’s a lot to protest in america. we need more, not less.
You are proving my point for me by having to sight numerous alternate reasons why one might not want to stand for the national anthem. Personally, I refused to attend any professional sports event between the ages of 18-23 because of my opposition to the Vietnam war. Many of us who opposed the war recognized the “bread and circus” nature of professional sports at that time. As entertainers, professional athletes have a responsibility equal to that of actors to resist being used as tools of propaganda. To continue playing the game while sitting for the national anthem is akin to an actor appearing in a movie that glorifies war while wearing an antiwar t-shirt in his/her own time. Entertainers who allow themselves to be used to glorify the very system to which they allegedly take exception are nothing more than hypocrites.
As far as Jackie Robinson is concerned, he never refused to stand for the national anthem. Rather he wrote this passage in a book well after retirement:
Yes, that is right, Jackie Robinson allowed himself to be used as a tool of propaganda throughout his entire career.
Muhammad Ali actually refused to serve in the military with the understanding that it might cost him his career as a professional boxer. It was only by means of legally challenging his exclusion from the sport that he was able to return after several years of struggle. Although Ali was an unapologetic race separatist for the remainder of his professional career, he at least stood on principle in a manner that was totally consistent with his stated beliefs.
I’m not sure if I missed something in this or other articles, but it seems the song was first written for the Barbary War. That version discussed spelling of infidel blood, the “Turks.”
See, The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815
Love the Intercept, but this article is embarrassing.
Where to begin? First, this is just mind numbing to any student of art history. The notion, even if the above claims are correct, that the only art that can be enjoyed by a community must come from a perfect human without sin or blemish is just, well, laughable. Did Picasso ever mistreat women?
Next, isn’t the troublesome line simply a description of a true, at the time, scenario? Never mind that, at the time of it’s composition, the UK still had slavery in it’s territories. And it goes on: http://iroots.org/2016/08/31/the-intercept-all-wrong-on-national-anthem/
Make shit up much, do we?
Who the fuck implied or flat out stated what you’ve accused the authors of implying or flat out stating in that quote of yours? Your attempt in your “rebuttal” to build a whole community of straw people in order to set them aflame is what would be “laughable” if it weren’t so painfully pretentious.
Hey Aaron, I hear you. Your comment reminds me of something I read about that which “liberal and left leaning critics” had to say concerning the “provocative, boundary-pushing, and transgressive” nature Robert Mapplethorpe’s work:
Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies
By Deborah T. Meem, Michelle Gibson, Michelle A. Gibson, Jonathan Alexander
Each work of art – be it a photograph or an anthem of the distant path – is a mere reflection of the aesthetic sensibilities of the day. Deconstructing art from the distant past in the light of contemporary racial, political and/or cultural sensibilities is an act of defilement and a vile assault on the truth of original intention. Nobody knows exactly why Leonardo da Vinci chose to paint Mona Lisa with her enigmatic smile, and scientific efforts to explain his motives only serve to undermine the aesthetic sense of wonder and appreciation that it provokes. Likewise, nobody truly knows what Key had in mind when he wrote his NOW infamous third stanza.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/mystery-of-mona-lisas-smile-solved-as-experts-say-da-vinci-used-the-same-illusion-years-before-10464139.html
differing styles of supremacy
every law which sanctions slavery is null and void, and that obedience to it is a sin,” Key declaimed. “
francis scott key
racist
‘is prepared to be critical of this university’ unless UC not only tackles [BDS] but also makes clear that perpetrators will be punished.”
diane feinstein
nationalist
https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/dianne-feinstein-husband-threaten-univ-calif-demanding-ban-excessive-israel-criticism/
> When Kaepernick changed his protest to kneeling instead of sitting, teammate Eric Reid joined him.
that’s a huge difference. kneeling shows more respect than standing. it’s an expression of submission or reverence. it makes the protest more gandhiesque if not incoherent
WOW!
Thank you Mr Morley and Jon for this fantastic “story”, a great history lesson.
When is the NEXT one coming online?? Eagerly waiting!
Even more influential than the National Anthem are the ancient Greeks who did own slaves. Perhaps your next article should be an attack on the Greeks. At least they need to be taken to task. Both Plato and Aristotle were powerful influences in early America. Unless I am mistaken the Israelites also had slaves which means launching research into the Bible. Good luck.
yeah what about the what abouts, huh, answer me that.
Oh my goodness.
Passing thought: Perhaps there is a Freudian explanation behind “taking on the dangers of fornication and abolitionism with equal fervor” and “[purchasing] an old woman and a little girl about 12 or 18 years old” then proceeding to give them to his mother?
Good work gents. It seems not much has changed in the U.S.