Today I got up at 4:30am so I could drive our high school JV wrestlers to a tournament in the middle of nowhere. These are tough days...it's nice to make the extra driving money but being away from the family and basically being stuck with Netflix and books is not all that enjoyable for me. I don't care for wrestling.
But as the meet starts today I notice something that seems to be everywhere now...the National Anthem. Before we can do any sporting event in our nation we have to all stand attention and hear the national anthem sung, often off key.
I love our country, and for all the problems we have I still think that there's nowhere else I'd rather live. But I am conflicted, in all honesty, about the excess of patriotism that seems to be everywhere in our country today. It's not that patriotism is a bad thing, of course...but I do think that the way it is practiced today is mind-numbing in its unthinking fealty towards our nation. More than faith in God, more than goodness wherever it may be found, more than genuine friendship and family, the love of nation seems to be our national religion today. Not just the nation, of course, but the nation as people want it to be in their minds: conservative, unchanging, homogenous.
The national anthem, in particular, is testament to this. It is a song ultimately about perseverance to fight a war (the War of 1812) that should never have been fought. It is a song about a flag and what it means to people rather than objective principles of righteousness.
Maybe that's why we sing it so robustly. Were it about something complicated, maybe we wouldn't think we have to indoctrinate our children and fellow citizens so strongly.
