I've been seeing shit like this a lot. Basically, it's a growing consensus among the severely religious deluded that says that the National Anthem represents a violent nation so it shouldn't be sung.
How long has the fight to restore the original Pledge of Allegiance gone on? Or at least a version that was used before xtianity was cooked into it to scare the Russians? I'd guess about the entire 57 years since "one nation under god" was added.
"I choose to belong to a strange tribe. Goshen College, my alma mater, made national news this month when its board of directors decided that the “Star Spangled Banner” would not be played before athletic events.
As could be expected, the decision was met with confusion and contempt. Wasn’t this just another example of our traditional values being trampled by the unrelenting march of political correctness? What sort of ingrates object to our nation’s anthem, anyway? Fluffy-headed campus philosophers? Lazy latte-sipping liberals?"
Traditional values being trampled, I believe is also how the fight to remove the names of religion-specific deities from our Pledge was also described. So it becomes clearer and clearer. The motivation by the far right xtian movement isn't to secure a piece of their own freedom. It is to seize control, make this a religious state - much like they accuse the Muslims of trying to do with their "sharia law" line of shit - and finally place some church ordained nut case in the Executive Branch's seat as the ruling monarch of the US.
Perhaps the fight to kill the National Anthem by a growing number in the xtian ranks isn't any less honorable than mine to sterilize our government of any trace of state sponsored religious delusion, if I look at it strictly from a speech freedom perspective. But from my point of view it does have an interesting twist.
If I don't like "one nation under god" because it brings your xtian god into view as a sovereign over me even though I don't have any use for, belief in, respect toward or patience for your puny, stupid grasp for power over non-believers by co-opting the things they do respect, well then I suppose I could pretty much fuck off and leave the church.
But what about the one who shows disrespect for the country, or founders' choice of Anthem, the remembrance of the battle that freed us from the very religious tyranny we're now having to fight all over again?
Is it just as right for me to tell you to pretty much fuck off and get out of the country or convince Texas to secede already and turn it into whatever dysfunctional church state you wish? Move to an island somewhere so we can bomb the living fuck out of you, take everything of value and once and for all expunge the blood line of the blood thirsty Puritans who are the bane of our history?
Mm. Probably not. But let's get one thing clear. This isn't your call. Don't sing the National Anthem if you don't wish to. That's your right to observe whatever twisted perception of "patriotism" you want. But understand the fight to keep you from making the rest of us follow your upside down world view by infesting our government, protected from your tyrannical control by the very ideals upon which it was founded (which ironically are the same ideals that keep you free to serve whatever hateful, bigoted, poisenous deity you wish) marches on.