Revisionist History: All the Rage
Updated on April 29, 2006 at 10:58 am.
Not long ago, conservatives were up in arms because some guy in California didn’t want his kid to hear her class recite the Pledge of Allegiance phrase under God in school. The whole thing was silly, really. Who cares if your kid’s class says the word God in its traditional patriotic opening ceremony? Her lunch money has the Almighty’s English name plastered all over it, anyway. Although you wouldn’t know it given the right’s Chicken Littlesque hysteria, the judicial system quickly disposed of the issue. I’d imagine that those damned activist judges had the day off.
[t]he Pledge of Allegiance was written for the popular children’s magazine Youth’s Companion by socialist author and Baptist minister Francis Bellamy on September 7, 1892…. Bellamy’s original Pledge read as follows: I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all…. After a proclamation by President Benjamin Harrison, the Pledge was first used in public schools on October 12, 1892 during Columbus Day observances…. The Knights of Columbus in New York City felt that the pledge was incomplete without any reference to a deity…. On Flag Day, June 14, 1954, Congress passed the legislation adding the phrase “under God” to the Pledge.
165 years earlier, the Founding Fathers notoriously made a big deal out of some wacky separation of church and state notion. They even wrote it down somewhere. Thank God we’ve gotten over that nonsense.
The right’s “War on the Pledge of Allegiance” panic was nothing more than another episode in a very long line of bizarre misty-eyed hearkenings back to a Norman Rockwell America which never was in an attempt to rile up a persecuted 80% minority of Americans. Their recent frantic pronouncement of a mythical “War on Christmas” was just another example. It would be more amusing if it wasn’t so predictable. They dig their persecution almost as much as their wars.
But Latin Americans are overwhelmingly Christian, so that card can’t be played to rile up the base about the immigration issue. Fortunately, immigrants are often brown in appearance; and worse, they speak a different language, so it’s appropriate to fear them.
CNN is here to help. This afternoon, a CNN reporter cried that “for the first time” a Spanish version of the Star-Spangled Banner is available. “As far as anyone can tell, there’s never been one sung in Spanish,” he later observed.
Are you scared yet? No?!? My God, man! We’ve got fuhriners streaming across the borders, and they’re clearly hell-bent on destroying our way of life! Never mind the real economic ramifications of our nonexistent immigration policy (they’re, ahem, good for business), illegal aliens have declared a War on English! That’s the only language we’ve got! Worse, they’ve declared an additional War on our National Anthem! We have only one of those! Heck, the next time you go to the ballgame, you might hear the National Anthem en Espanol! Only the players on the field would understand it! We’re fighting two new wars! No, wait! They’ve also declared a War on the American Flag! Three wars! As far as CNN reporters can tell, this is an unprecedented assault on America!
As far as I can tell, CNN reporters are remarkably unfamiliar with Google. From No More Mister Nice Blog:
I’d like to point out that Francis Haffkine Snow translated “The Star-Spangled Banner” into Spanish in 1919. The lyrics are here, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Click through the links at this About.com page and you can read Snow’s translation and three others that predate the new one that’s got all the nativists’ knickers in a twist.
They’ve been destroying America for more than 85 years! Who knew?
Have no fear, America. Your President and Senate are on the case:
(AP) President Bush said Friday the national anthem should be sung in English _ not Spanish _ in a blunt rejection of a new Spanish-language version.
* * *
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said he would introduce a Senate resolution Monday “giving senators an opportunity to remind the country why we sing our national anthem in English.”
Resolution (rez-e-loo’-shun), n.: see synonyms at meaningless distraction.
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