I just read this in the paper:
Common acts like fidgeting while standing in line at the grocery, pushing a baby carriage, or giving a blank stare should be regarded with suspicion, according to a memo sent to police departments from the Homeland Security Department.
That leaves me with about 75 people whom I could report -- and all I did was walk past some teenager to buy some gum at the convenience store on the corner.
This brings to mind a friend‘s recent comment: “Doesn’t Homeland Security sound a little too much like Fatherland Security?”
Well, ratting each other out keeps the home front busy and makes us feel like we’re doing something, and compared to baking red, white and blue flag cookies, there’s less mess to clean up in the kitchen.
Then there’s the omnipresent song, Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to Be An American,” which boils down Thomas Jefferson verbosity with this great lyric: “Where at least I know I’m free.“
Who needs to proclaim “I‘m proud to be an American“ anyway? There’s a Chris Rock bit: “Hey, I take care of my kids,” to which Rock responds: “You’re supposed to.” Or men will say "I ain't never been to jail,“ Rock says: “You shouldn't ever be in jail!"
I don’t begrudge Lee Greenwood’s little straight-ahead patriotic country song, (I'm partial to clever songs, which aren't popular anymore, but as we go to press, still legal...remember: if Cole Porter is outlawed, only outlaws will have cole Porter), but it’s no anthem. In fact, it’s sloppy: The line I won’t forget the men who died who gave that right to me is misleading. The men who died -- he’s talking soldiers -- didn’t give that right to anybody. They preserved it.
That right is the opportunity to keep renewing freedom. As he dies near the end of “Saving Private Ryan” Capt. John Miller (Tom Hanks), says to Private Ryan, “Earn this.” And Ryan, in old age, wonders if he earned the right to survive, given to him by those who didn’t. He crumples to the ground asking, “Did I lead a good life?”
(An interesting nugget of the film is when elderly Ryan approaches the graves of his fallen buddies, a baby-boomer aged member of his family, son or son-in-law, is more concerned with capturing the man’s true heart moment on film rather than giving him the dignity of solitude. The sound of that tripping camera is more vulgar than gunfire.
“Proud to be an American” has become a war song. But why not sing it on Labor Day? “I won’t forget the ones who died who gave that right to me” could just as well honor the coal miners shot in Matawan, West Virginia in 1920 because they wanted to organize to demand safe working conditions. Or sung to remember civil rights activist Medgar Evers, who survived World War II but was slain outside of his home in 1963. Their sacrifices, among countless others, contributed to American freedom.
Why not sing the praises of even Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, who looked like ol’ Granny in the Tweety-Bird cartoons, but whose activism raised awareness of unfair working conditions for railroad workers, miners and agitated to help end child labor.
And a million more like them who never shot a foreigner.
A shrug of a lyric like “where at least I know I’m free” ought to be footnoted with a little diverse history.
Fate doesn’t provide each American generation something so obvious as a war to prove its mettle. In lieu of war, good citizenship requires imagination. It requires innovative ways to fix schools, keep water pure, and health care vibrant, among a thousand other difficult, unsung challenges. It requires knowing more than just “at least we’re free” but how we became that way on all accounts, in war and peace, and how we can perpetuate it in more productive ways than blasting small Arab countries to smithereens, then hitting the showers and heading home.
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