I think this says everything we feel When Americans Sing > > As a nation, we are not singers. We sing "The Birthday Song", awkwardly, >off-key, and usually in the privacy of our homes. Some of us try the >national anthem at sporting events, but mostly we leave that to hired >professionals. We do not have drinking songs, the happy hallmark of most >Western cultures. And while I hear in Italy it is not unusual to hear an >Italian break into an opera aria as he walks down the street; that never >happens here. So when we do sing, pay attention. > > Yesterday, our Congress broke into a spontaneous rendition of "God Bless >America" on the Capitol steps. Those who know us well know what this means: >be afraid---be very afraid. Submerged elements of our national character >seen only once or twice every hundred years are coming to the surface. > > We have another song I expect to hear soon, horrible and beautiful. It >has this line: > > "He is trampling out the vintage > where the grapes of wrath are stored;" > > As a nation, we are no more given to wrath that we are to singing, >mainly because true wrath requires righteousness, and we don't think of >ourselves as righteous. We have plenty of food and plenty of fun, and if >someone spoils our party, we move it elsewhere. We do not contemplate >righteousness. Yesterday, September 11, 2001, we ran out of places to go, >and for the first time in almost 6 decades, we shut the party down. > > Today, sober but still not righteous, we think about revenge, and the >next line of our song: > > "He hath loosed the fateful lightning > Of His terrible swift sword;" > >But, as a nation, we are no more given to revenge than we are to singing. >That's because it's not righteous, and we, the unrighteous, have decided on >this morning to be just a little more righteous than we were. We will not >act out of revenge, because we cannot sustain our vengefulness. So we go on >to the next line: > > "His truth is marching on" > > Truth. The first word that begins to move us in this hour. Really >to move us. Not as children in the schoolyard or madmen in the air, but as >the people we are and have been and can be again when it is really required. >Truth nudges us closer to the word that always follows in our minds and in >our souls: Freedom. Freedom is the heritage we receive and the only >worthwhile gift we bear. It is the one precious thing we have to feel >righteous about. Without it we are a footnote, a bully face in the crowd of >nations that parade through these centuries. It is our "pearl of great >price" and we will not give it up. Which brings us to the end of our song. > > "As He died to make men holy, > Let us die to make men free; > While God is marching on." > >Whenever those words ring from our lips, they do not die away until nations >crumble, rulers are cast down, and kingdoms are swept into the sea. To our >enemies I can only say this: when Americans sing, be very afraid.