America the Awesome

For all the pomp and circumstance of its presentation, there is something admirably humble about America’s national anthem. Britain’s anthem is cartoonish, with its repeated entreaties to “save” an already-well-secured monarch and its insistence that God is destined to “scatter” the “knavish” enemies of the crown. France’s anthem is utopian, with all those references to the “child of the fatherland,” the “day of glory,” and the prospect of “impure blood” watering the fields. But America’s? America’s has about it that quality of the unknown. From the outset, it poses questions. “O say, can you see?” it inquires. “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave / O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” Eventually — when the “rocket’s red glare” gives “proof through the night that our flag was still there” — the answer is “Yes,” and yet, implicit in the inquiry is the notion that if things had gone a little differently, the flag and all that it represents might well have ended up in tatters.

And well they might. Today, we celebrate July 4 in the knowledge that the nation it birthed has been a smashing success.

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