USA Today gave Michael Medved, the world's least relevant movie critic, some column space this morning which he felt he needed to fill with a pedantic history of American patriotic music and a slam against a member of the DailyKos community.
The commentary is called "Faith and Nationalism: Indivisible in America." I'm going to pause right here just for a second so that the operative word of this title, Nationalism, can sink in. Not "patriotism," Nationalism. I'm for one disturbed that Medved is so anxious to hawk Nationalism, but I'll leave that issue to the reader to infer whatever he or she'd care to from that.
Medved's point of departure was a
post by a self-proclaimed first and last time diarist (who goes by the handle Radical Faith) that describes how the poster left church in the middle of a Sunday service after hearing a rendition of "God Bless the USA," the rather jingoistic song by Lee Greenwald that was released in 1984. Rather than being amazed to find a Liberal in a house of God, Medved saw an opportunity to come to the foolish conclusion that church-state "seperationists" (as he calls them) see no room for a commingling of patriotism and faith in song.
In the diary Radical Faith repeated states that his or her beef is specifically with the song "God Bless the USA". But that doesn't stop Medved from bringing up a playlist of patriotic ditties to demonstrate once and for all that God and, once again, Nationalism are forever intertwined.
To buttress his argument, Medved seems to find all the evidence anyone should care to bother with from a trio of songs in our country's musical heritage. First he cites a passage from Francis Scott Key's "Star Spangled Banner." I'm hesitant to say that Medved cites the National Anthem because what he actually does is bring up a few lines from the fourth stanza of the full poem Key wrote, which, in case anyone hasn't been to a baseball game recently, isn't part of the song we sing (which is only the first stanza of the poem).
Next, Medved brings up "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and then throws in "America (My Country `Tis of Thee)." The former was first published in 1862, the later written in 1831. He brings us these to suggest that liberals would have nothing to sing to express patriotism on say a national holiday.
That's not the point.
Medved's twisted the argument here. Radical Faith was arguing about churches pushing nationalism during a typical Sunday Service. Medved wants his readers to believe that RF would sooner wipe the songs that he just cited clear from the American musical cannon. Furthermore, the songs on Medved's playlist are between 190-140 years old, are lyrically haunting and demonstrate a command of poetry, and are musically challenging. Lee Greenwald's song is chest-beating and full of tonal gimmicks. I don't know anyone who goes to church to replenish their allegiance to the state. I do, however, know plenty of folks that go to church to reaffirm their faith in God, which should be the primary objective of any faith-based community.
Not so, according to Medved. He brings up Alexis de Tocqueville, because that's what commentators do when they want to sound learned:
...Alexis de Tocqueville traveled Jacksonian America and commented on the unique American tendency to fuse religious enthusiasm with nationalistic pride.
I guess Medved was talking about this passage:
In America religion is a distinct sphere, in which the priest is sovereign, but out of which he takes care never to go. Within its limits he is master of the mind; beyond them he leaves men to themselves and surrenders them to the independence and instability that belong to their nature and their age. I have seen no country in which Christianity is clothed with fewer forms, figures, and observances than in the United States, or where it presents more distinct, simple, and general notions to the mind.
--Democracy in America; Vol. II, Sect. I, Chapt. V.
Or maybe it was this passage...
Anyway, Medved continues to bang the America-is-God's-chosen-nation drum --
Many Americans might feel uncomfortable with our long history of entangling our sense of national identity with claims of divine mission, our consistent and nearly universal assumption that the Almighty had selected this nation for His purposes.
Defenders of secularism might argue that we will enjoy a brighter, better future by severing the associations between faith and nationalism, but they shouldn't attempt to mischaracterize the past -- or to suggest that they're returning us to an era of absolute church-state separation that never existed.
(emphasis added)
Please. No one's doing that, Mr. Medved. Dude seems to think that all his precious patriotic songs will slip quietly into oblivion like they were written by Kevin Federline. He need not worry. They're our songs too, and we'll continue to sing them because they're beautiful, challenging, haunting, evocative and express aspects of the human condition, both sublime and profane, that go beyond mere expressions of my-country-can-beat-the-shit-out-of-your-country.
We have bumper stickers for that sentiment.