Dear Frances,
The poem you set to the music of a wild British drinking song is still sung in our schools and our sporting events. By law (United States Code, 36 U.S.C. § 301) when your song is played all men (except in the military) “should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart.” I rarely see that done with baseball caps at ball games; perhaps it was more appropriate when men wore top hats or fedoras. Nevertheless, that law is certainly a tribute to the sacred quality your song has gathered since you wrote it.
As for the question you asked,
“O! 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?
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?
The answer is a definite, yes. In fact the U. S. has between 700 and 800 military bases in about seventy countries and I assume that The Star Spangled Banner waves over all those bases on multiple HQs, hangars, officers’ clubs, munitions depots, garages, ports, etc., etc. The flag is definitely still waving.
And there’s plenty of “rockets’ red glare” and “bombs bursting in air.” Notably from drones in Pakistan and airstrikes in Afghanistan. There are a lot of bombs bursting on the ground, too, mainly intended to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. So there’s no lack of fireworks similar to what you were looking at near Baltimore in 1814, though, I venture to say, on a rather larger scale today.
With all due respect, Frances, I might say that you guys had it easier fighting the Brits on your home territory. You could see that they were out to get President Madison and his nice wife Dolly as well as lay waste to your towns and farms. As you wrote,
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
But the situation’s a wee more complicated today when we have the paranoid suspicion that everyone, everywhere is against us. (By the way, it turns out the Brits have now stopped burning our cities and have also stopped burning Afghan cities. They tried to teach us how not to do colonialism, but I’m afraid their friendly suggestions didn’t work any better than our own strategies.)
The problem today, and which leads us to have 700-800 bases all around the world (with about 130,000 troops in foreign countries beyond the million or so in North America), is that your country, Frances, has become so wealthy that we think we can afford to stop attacks on the U.S. before they land on our soil as they did in 1814. So, in a way, all the world is now American soil. That’ll probably make you stop and think, Frances.
My last point is, that your country was relatively poor in 1814-relative to England, France, etc. The U.S. could hardly afford a military in its early years. Strangely, we are now asking how much of a military we can afford in the 21st century. We aren’t exactly going from riches to rags, though our pockets are a lot less full. Singing your Star Spangled Banner helps us retain our optimism. But with more of our own expensive bombs bursting all over the world maybe we should think a little more about the end of your fine anthem:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Perhaps we should have a few less of our flags waving over the homes of others and bring them back to wave over our own little post offices and ball parks. I guess the government, out of necessity is really contemplating that. If you were around today, you’d probably agree that your, may I say, rather bombastic anthem, can also be interpreted to stand, as I’m sure you meant it for a nation with pride and an interest in defending itself but without grandiose dreams of patrolling from the Diego Garcia to Germany, Bahrain, Libya, and Korea, taking pre-emptive measures against groups that dislike us as much as the Brits did in 1814.
The future is upon us, as it was in your time. We have major quandries and difficult challenges. The breeze of our own battles regarding resources, the economy, the environment, and quality still “fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses.” We will see if the flag, the symbol of our future as well as our past “catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,” as it did for you over fort McHenry.
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