The Intercept All Wrong on National Anthem

There’s an especially stupid article making the rounds from The Intercept this week regarding the dust-up over the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, refusing to stand for the national anthem.

First off, who cares?

Let him be a self-righteous SJW (social justice warrior) if he feels so moved. That’s one of the truly wonderful things about our country. It’s the land of the free and the home of the brave and/or tumblr social justice losers.

Check out this ridiculous headline:

“Colin Kaepernick Is Righter Than You Know: The National Anthem Is a Celebration of Slavery”

So, little did we know for all of these years, 10s of millions of Americans have been literally singing an ode to slavery…’celebrating’ slavery for 100+ years! It’s an absurd notion, laughable on the face of it.

But let’s see what the folks at The Intercept have to say.

Almost no one seems to be aware that even if the U.S. were a perfect country today, it would be bizarre to expect African-American players to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Why? Because it literally celebrates the murder of African-Americans.

Few people know this because we only ever sing the first verse. But read the end of the third verse and you’ll see why “The Star-Spangled Banner” is not just a musical atrocity, it’s an intellectual and moral one, too:

Here’s the lyrics referred to:

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.

Wow, there’s already so much pseudo-intellectual nonsense going on here. Let’s just (very foolishly) assume the article is correct that this verse (which is almost never sung) is actually celebrating the killing of black people. Here’s their angle:

“The Star-Spangled Banner,” Americans hazily remember, was written by Francis Scott Key about the Battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812…

And one of the key tactics behind the British military’s success was its active recruitment of American slaves.

So when Key penned (In September of 1814) “No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,” he was taking great satisfaction in the death of slaves who’d freed themselves.

Let’s just leave out the little fact that the British Empire didn’t abolish slavery until 1833 (with the exceptions “of the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company“, the “Island of Ceylon” and “the Island of Saint Helena”).

The head spins! Do we have to go on? I mean, really what were we evil revolutionary colonists thinking anyway! Those nice British redcoats were just trying to spread love peace and harmony–freeing slaves over here in the New World…totally…

Let’s just marvel again at the idiocy of one of the article’s opening sentences, “It would be bizarre to expect African-American players to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Why? Because it literally celebrates the murder of African-Americans.” 

I mean, how vapid and shallow do you have to be to think like this? Let’s see if I have this straight: Some Africans fighting on the side of the British were killed in a battle by American forces, so all African-Americans today are suppose to identify with the British and be offended by a song that mentions their defeat?

What about the fact that African-Americans made up at least fifteen percent of U.S. naval corps at this time?

These black sailors had a reputation for fierceness in battle.  When Captain Oliver Hazard Perry complained about having blacks on his ship, Commodore Isaac Chauncey replied, “I have nearly fifty blacks on this boat and many of them are among the best of my men.”  Perry soon had the chance to test Chauncey’s recommendation.  At the Battle of Lake Erie, where Perry’s fleet thwarted the British, his black sailors performed so well that he wrote to the Secretary of the Navy, praising their courage… (PBS Black Sailors and Soldiers in the War of 1812)

What about the fact that Andrew Jackson “organized a battalion of free blacks, whom he called “brave fellow citizens,” and paid them the same amount as white soldiers?”

One more rebuttal from a decent post over at Snopes.

In fairness, it has also been argued that Key may have intended the phrase as a reference to the British Navy’s practice of impressment (kidnapping sailors and forcing them to fight in defense of the crown), or as a semi-metaphorical slap at the British invading force as a whole (which included a large number of mercenaries), though the latter line of thinking suggests an even stronger alternative theory — namely, that the word “hirelings” refers literally to mercenaries and “slaves” refers literally to slaves. It doesn’t appear that Francis Scott Key ever specified what he did mean by the phrase, nor does its context point to a single, definitive interpretation.

You know, maybe life is messy? Maybe, just maybe, life is bloody awful at times…and full of moments of sweet joy and ecstasy. Maybe The Star Spangled Banner is like a time capsule full of interesting artifacts and handed down for generations? Some of those artifacts are painful, some are lovely.

Are we really better off or safe if we sanitize all art, music, memorials and flags? Should all public life be a ‘Safe Space” with trigger warnings? Isn’t it amazing how the left has become the new religious right?

I’ll close with some rational thinking from Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia. I think you’ll see the connection…

By the way, did you know the melody for The Star Spangled Banner is borrowed/stolen from a British drinking song?