With the approach of Independence Day, my thoughts turn to patriotism. When I was an elected official, that included the Independence Day parade in my community where I would bring a horse drawn team and a wagon filled with supporters to greet celebrating people along the way. I shook many hands on that parade route for 16 years and each time it gave me hope in the future of my community, my state, and my nation.
I love America. That’s why I swore an oath to defend it with my life for 28 years. That’s why I renewed that oath as a legislator in the Virginia General Assembly for another 16. Independence Day ranks high on my card of significant celebrations. It has—in the past—given me hope.
For me that hope resides in the people, symbols, songs, and prose we embrace to express our love for this nation. It’s the spirit of freedom. Nowhere is that given better expression than in our National Anthem, words penned by Francis Scott Key. Read them, slowly:
Oh, say! can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming;
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there:
Oh, say! does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Does it now strike you that the lines we frequently sing are actually two questions? Key asked if we can still see the flag of our nation that was flying resiliently when the sun set the previous evening. Is it there? The second question renews the first. Despite all that had occurred over night as British Warships relentless bombarded Fort McHenry guarding the approach to Baltimore, was it still there? Our National Anthem poses a profound question today. Are we still there?
The events of recent weeks have shaken our nation. Racial strife, anarchy in our street, fulminated hatred for our history, and lawlessness by those who would tear down monuments not to their liking, forsake the slightest regard for an orderly discussion and process. Mob rule now supplants the rule of law even as elected officials—people who have taken an oath to enforce the law—brazenly discard it to mollycoddle the perpetrators of criminal behavior. Disintegration happens slowly when leaders cannot be found. Destruction is certain when warriors cannot be found.
There were warriors at Fort McHenry in 1814 who battled throughout the night against overwhelming odds. The second stanza of Key’s work confirms their bravery as the early morning breeze gave life to our flag.
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In fully glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
It’s not the first time America faced overwhelming odds. Just 27 years earlier, Delegates in Philadelphia had defied those who doubted a new Constitution would emerge. Against all odds, they crafted a remarkable document, one we celebrate on Independence Day. As delegates went forward to sign their names to it, James Madison recorded the words of Benjamin Franklin concerning the mahogany armchair—made by John Folwell and adorned with a gilded half sun on the chair’s top—that had been Washington’s seat for almost three months during the convention.
“Whilst the last members were signing it Doctor Franklin looking towards the President’s Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have, said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.”
Let us hope that Franklin’s words continue to sustain the sentiments expressed by Key and that the words on our great seal: Novus ordo seculorum—a new order of the ages—endures forever. And that we, in the brilliant light a rising sun, face a new dawn and not the dusk of a setting one.
PS: The summer is a great time to relax and read my book, Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War, so I hope you will order it today. Also, please visit my book pages on Amazon and Goodreads to write a personal review. Thanks!
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