America--history of the anthem

 

June 14 commemorates both the founding of the American Army and Flag day. The 2^nd Continental Congress approved an Army on June 14, 1775 to defend the 13 colonies against British abuses.  Through reorganizations of the Articles of Confederation and then the Constitution, the Army continued and is the oldest branch of the Department of Defense.  Flag Day commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777 by resolution of the Second Continental Congress. But the era which brought these dates to prominence were enormously celebrated was a period after the War of 1812, called The Era of Good Feeling.  The name is an understatement. Americans had just won a war against the greatest power on earth, unassisted by allies, and it was a crazy win.  Ft. McHenry of Baltimore had held against all odds and Francis Scott Key had written his stirring poem that would later become the national anthem. Disease and a hurricane had driven the British from Washington. Jackson had made a defense near New Orleans with mostly 4000 common citizens and a few pirates and beat back an invasion fleet with 10,000 British regulars fresh from defeating Napoleon.  And it came as the 2^nd Great Awakening of Christian faith thanked God’s unbelievable grace for leaving USA independent, the only republic in the world. When Jefferson and Adams died the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50^th anniversary of Independence, it was hailed as providential.  Daniel Webster spoke in Boston commemorating their lives as “an American Constellation in the heavens.”

            Rev. Samuel Francis Smith heard that speech.  He was a seminary student at Andover Theological Seminary.  He was later reading some German patriotic hymns and got the idea to compose one for the United States.  “Seizing a scrap of waste paper I began to write, and in half an hour, I think, the words stood upon it, substantially as they are sung today.”  The tune of the Royal British national anthem, “God Save the King” was impudently appropriated for America.

1.“My Country! ‘tis of thee,                     4.Our fathers’ God! To Thee,

            Sweet Land of Liberty,                           Author of Liberty,

            Of thee I sing.                                       To Thee we sing.

            Land where my fathers died,                  Long may our land be bright                 

            Land of the pilgrims’ pride,                    With freedom’s holy light;

            From every mountainside                       Protect us by Thy might,

            Let freedom ring!                                   Great God, our King!

Part of the magic of this song is that Smith wrote it in first person singular, “my country”.  A classmate of Smith’s at Harvard, Oliver Wendell Holmes, went on to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Years later, he wrote, “What is Fame? It is to write a hymn which sixty million people [then US population] sing, like Samuel Smith did.”

            Jackson’s victory day, January 8 was commemorated Second Independence Day and singing of America became the common practice.”When you hear it played on the piano, it feels like a hymn…with an orchestra it becomes regal and majestic. ” ‘My Country ‘Tis Of Thee’ is really about putting, not a monarch, but the nation itself and God’s guidance at the center of our imaginative lives.”—country music artist, Tim McGraw.  At the Union Camp Saxton, 1862, Smith’s hymn was the first thing sung by freed slaves when Emancipation was proclaimed. It was the last thing sung to dying soldiers among TR’s Rough Riders in Cuba, 1898.  It gave Martin Luther King his peroration at the March on Washington, 1963. But best of all, it’s a reminder to all who sing it, that USA was born of ideas, chief among which was dependence on God’s Grace.

How genocide happens

 

THE 2020 RIOTS, CONGRESSIONAL POWER PLAYS, RULE By EXECUTIVE ORDERS POINT TO PARTISANSHIP. Is that a problem? While I don’t accuse any of genocidal behavior, we need to understand the Holocaust and how it happened.  In March 1942 80% of all victims of the Holocaust were still alive.  By Feb. 1943, only 20%.  That year of mass murder didn’t occur in concentration camps but were performed by very ordinary men, mainly in the forests of eastern Europe. Poland was the nexus. In the aftermath of the war, numerous psychological studies by criminologists were done to try to understand this.  There is a type of “authoritarian personality” which is anti-democratic, obsessed with authority, has aggressiveness towards out-groups, lacks introspection, tends towards stereotyping, and preoccupied with sex and power and toughness.  These are cruel people who were typically the Nazis who first volunteered, but not the vast majority of common Germans who killed the Jews in ‘42.  Just a few SS men were among them.  Other studies suggested that some of the killers were “sleepers” to violence, say, someone who does not question authority, but this has been mostly disproven.  The people who did the genocide were those not desirable for Germany’s army.  They avoided the draft, were too old or very young, middle class people with jobs as salesmen, dentists, factory workers, etc. who did not want to be part of the army. But the Nazis and Himmler who ran both the SS and police created them.  When the war got into full swiing, it became apparent that the military needed as many men as it could get.  Police forces were raided for soldiers and then for police that would occupy the conquered territories. Most had almost no training.  It was these Order Police that massacred most of the Jews. At first they were sent to hunt down Bolsheviks for extermination and implicated Jews, Gypsies, and others as bad, rebellious people in conquered lands. The SS officers played on the patriotism of these clueless men but often told them they would not have to do any of the executions if they were weak.  Most of them agreed, however, not that they were interested in career advancements or appeal to superiors.  True, some Poles also helped the Nazis.  Most of the Jews lived in among small villages and identification was difficult. Nazi soldiers were subject to a lot of propaganda.  3 threats they deemed: Christianity which was spread by Jew Paul; liberalism which admired the uprising of racially inferior (French Revolution); and Bolshevism, advanced by Jew Karl Marx.  Jews were a racial mixture, it was asserted(untrue) who had sold out Germany in WW I.  And Nazisim was obsessed with racial purity.  But many of the Order Police were Christians and didn’t believe much of the propaganda. Moreover, the early Nazi pamphlets didn’tcall for genocide, just removal of Jews from Europe.

            What caused genocide? First, a demonization campaign. Then Jews were removed from Germany to Poland and Latvia (Latvians especially disliked Jews) Distance makes dislike and lack of sympathy.  There were stories of the Order Police running into someone they knew from Germany and being totally sickened.  But mostly the Germans didn’t know who they were killing.  Secondly, SS and some other diehard anti-semites did a lot of the initial trigger pulling, while Jew hunts and guarding was done by the Order Police. When a few try to guard a lot of others, it breeds discontent and threats from the captives, and this leads to desperation and lack of empathy of the guards.  As time went on, more and more of the Order Police were willing to join in the killing.  Obligation to the battalion and a desire to look good in front of comrades seems to have been a large issue. But after the war, they said they were just following orders, a convenient excuse, not born out by cross-interviewing.

            So what?  Well, imagine if some group started labeling en mass an out-group “white supremacists” or some name that is uncompromisable—demonization and dehumanization. Thus hatred is condoned  If the  out-group doesn’t believe in Critical Race Theory or some other doctrine they are shunned and persecuted. Partisanship allows no dialog between sides. The majority grabs power at all levels and Congress rams legislation through. The demonized groups are herded into states of their color. Desire for place in the Party or solidarity with comrades makes some ordinary people commit atrocities. We've seen this in Rwanda, Soviet Russia, China, Middle East and a host of other places.

            If the reader wishes to investigate further, Christopher Browning, historian at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington wrote a thoroughly researched book on the subject complete with interviews of former unprosecuted Order Police Battalion 101 members and Poles to witness the same events.