Spucatum tauri: The Star Spangled Banner...in Spanish

A GRAVE INSULT

A scheduled release of America's national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," in Spanish, is raising the ire of many, including those who are sympathetic to some immigrant and illegal aliens plight.
This will serve one purpose, to further those with extreme sentiments and push moderates into an unfriendly position.
What a travesty, that this nation's anthem, a symbol in song of our patriotism and love of country, is sang in a foreign language.

And yes, did we mention the sliding in of new lyrics, complete with fashionable and p.c. lines offering political commentary on immigration.

As the above linked article wonders, can one imagine the response from the French should the "La Marseillaise" be recorded in English. Gallic pride would rise up in virulent cries for vitrolic revenge.
No nation should have such a cultural cornerstone effaced in this way.






Is this what immigrants in 1840, or 1900, or 1980 hoped for? That their children would one day sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Gaelic, Italian, Croatian, tribal dialects, or tonal variations?
Is this what soldiers for some two hundred years have died for? Is this what brings a tear to the patriotic eye before a baseball game?
I know it is not.

As a historian, I made sure that despite immigrants, regional differences, cultural divergences, and state loyalties, Key wrote the original in ENGLISH. Indeed he did.




The Star-Spangled Banner
by Francis Scott Key

O say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watch'd were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bomb bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

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 full glory reflected now shines in the stream,
'Tis the star-spangled banner - O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash'd out their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto - "In God is our trust,"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Nota Bene: Honouring Lech Walesa

Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Salutes President Lech Walesa

Drawing his strength from devout Catholicism, Lech Walesa, a Polish shipyard worker, led the 10 million member "Solidarnosc" or "Solidarity" movement that helped crack communism in Eastern Europe. He ranks with Reagan, Thatcher, Solzhenitsyn, and Pope John Paul II as the key figures in defeating Soviet Russia and her satellites.




"I have often been asked in the United States to sign the poster that many Americans consider very significant. Prepared for the first almost-free parliamentary elections in Poland in 1989, the poster shows Gary Cooper as the lonely sheriff in the American Western, "High Noon." Under the headline "At High Noon" runs the red Solidarity banner and the date--June 4, 1989--of the poll. It was a simple but effective gimmick that, at the time, was misunderstood by the Communists. They, in fact, tried to ridicule the freedom movement in Poland as an invention of the "Wild" West, especially the U.S.
But the poster had the opposite impact: Cowboys in Western clothes had become a powerful symbol for Poles. Cowboys fight for justice, fight against evil, and fight for freedom, both physical and spiritual. Solidarity trounced the Communists in that election, paving the way for a democratic government in Poland. It is always so touching when people bring this poster up to me to autograph it. They have cherished it for so many years and it has become the emblem of the battle that we all fought together. "
Lech Walesa

Christian Reflections, Sixteen

"The Inadequacy of Instant Christianity"

By A.W. Tozer

"Instant Christianity tends to make the faith act terminal and so smothers the desire for spiritual advance. It fails to understand the true nature of the Christian life, which is not static, but dynamic and expanding. It overlooks the fact that a new Christian is a living organism as certainly as a new baby is, and must have nourishment and exercise to assure normal growth. It does not consider that the act of faith in Christ sets up a personal relationship between two intelligent moral beings, God and the reconciled man, and no single encounter between God a creature made in his image could ever be sufficient to establish an intimate friendship between them.

By trying to pack all of salvation into one experience, or two, the advocates of instant Christianity flaunt the law of development which runs through all nature. They ignore the sanctifying effects of suffering, cross carrying, and practical obedience. They pass by the need for spiritual training, the necessity of forming right religious habits, and the need to wrestle against the world, the devil, and the flesh...

Instant Christianity is twentieth-century orthodoxy. I wonder whether the man who wrote Philippians 3:7-16 would recognise it as the faith for which he finally died. I am afraid he would not."

Christian Reflections, Fifteen

"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."

Tertullian

Quote for the Day

"In the beginning was the Word, not the Fact; history is thought and spoken and written with words; and the historian must be master of his words as much as of his 'facts,' whatever those might mean."

"For words are not mere tools, neither are they mere symbols. They are representative realities; they remind us of the inevitable connection between imagination and reality... The corruption of speech involves the corruption of truth, and the corruption of words means the debasement of speech which is the debasement of our most human and historic gifts."

- John Lukacs -