I always thought I'd be going to hell. Now I know it. I actually agree with Dubya about something, to wit: his stand on the singing of the National Anthem. Yes, it should be sung in English and only in English.
I have no problem with translating the lyrics into Spanish (or any other language for that matter) so that people whose English is not so good can learn to understand what the Anthem is and what it means. I have no problem with putting the Anthem's melody to a salsa or any other kind of Latin rhythm. After all, the Anthem itself was adapted from an old British English drinking song. Besides, good music withstands just about any melodic/rhythmic treatment one cares to give it--I do not mind listening to the Beatles in Muzak, for one example. [Note that I said "just about any." Roseanne's desecration of the Anthem at a baseball game a few years ago is NOT included.--Ed.]
But to sing the Anthem in anything other than its language of composition is to make it no longer American. And that is just plain wrong.
Teddy Roosevelt in 1907 allegedly said: "In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
I have not had the chance to confirm independently that this is in fact an exact quote, but I do not doubt its accuracy in spirit.
The notion that being an American is more a state of mind than anything else is of sound and long standing in this country. That is what being an American is. In no other country in the world can you become a citizen of full and equal standing just by living there. Oh, you can become a citizen, but you will never be recognized as being a FULL citizen, because your ethnic and religious background matter to the native-born citizens of every place on Earth except in America. Emma Lazarus enshrined it in her poem "The New Colossus." "Give me your tired, your huddles masses, yearning to breathe free."
To those who say it is their right to sing the Anthem in Spanish because of the First Amendment, I say two things. First, do not twist our laws against us to promote an essentially un-American end. Second, sing it in Spanish all you want, but do not say that it makes you American to do so. It does not. That is by definition not what being an American is. [I keep wondering what would have happened had we gone into Germany in post-WW II Europe and translated the post-Nazi German anthem into English and started singing it all over the place. As badly beaten as the Germans were, I think they'd have risen up in opposition to that. And it would have started the recognition that we were not so much an ally as an occupying power a lot earlier than it actually occurred to the Germans.--Ed.]
But to agree with Dubya!?!?!? Like I said, this means I am going straight to hell. Or maybe not. After all, as Ann Landers so cogently noted several years ago, "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day." Dubya is most definitely a stopped clock.
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