star-spangledThe Star-Spangled Banner Still Waves – The American Spectator

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;
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs 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?
— Francis Scott Key, The Star-Spangled Banner

Every school kid used to know the story behind America’s National Anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner. How, on September 13, 1814, British warships fired a seemingly endless barrage of shells and rockets on Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor for 25 hours. How, just weeks earlier, the British had taken Washington, D.C. and burned the Capitol building and the White House. How, from the deck of an English ship eight miles away, arrested 35-year-old lawyer Francis Scott Key saw the U.S. flag flying over the fort throughout the bombardment, fully expecting the Union Jack to take its place in the morning. How, in the tranquil yet smoke-filled dawn, he watched the Stars and Stripes still fluttering above the embarkment, signaling an American victory. How the choked-up Key turned his thoughts and observations into a poem, which became a song and, in 1931, the National Anthem.

But that was in the not so distant past, when schools still taught such trifles as actual history and patriotism rather than sexual orientation and anti-American propaganda. Today, if children learn about Scott Key at all, it’s that he was a slave owner glorifying a country “built on slavery,” and that the flag he revered deserves to merely flank the loftier rainbow “pride” flag on the White House balcony. And young people are taking this lesson to heart. A new Gallup poll last week put the number of people “extremely proud” to be American at a lamentable 39 percent. Although half of US adults 55 and older affirm that label, only 18 percent of those 18-34 do.

Can the country survive such next generational antipathy? If you look at the military recruitment figures, it can’t. Last year, the US Army had its worst induction year since it became an all-volunteer force in 1973, missing its recruiting goal by 25 percent. This year, the Army expects to fall short of its 65,000-enlistee target by 15,000, the Navy its 38,000 goal by 10,000, and the Air Force its 27,000 hope by 3,000. (READ MORE: Woke Indoctrination Is Destroying the Military)

Of course, America-bashing education alone has not dampened young men’s pro-military fervor. The current sad, woke state of the Biden Administration’s Pentagon leadership is equally, if not more, off-putting. Whereas boys once idolized generals Washington, Jackson, Grant, Pershing, Roosevelt, and Patton, and admirals Perry, Nimitz, and Spruance, all they see now are pathetic losers such as General Mark (“white rage”) Milley and Lloyd (“Where’s my mask?”) Austin, now the Secretary of Defense.

And the most famous admiral in this administration is a freakish fat man (Richard Levine) masquerading as an ugly, unfit woman (“Rachel” Levine), ridiculously the Assistant Secretary for Health, not exactly a recruitment model for the Navy. Tucker Carlson incisively mocked Levine in his latest Twittercast, in a manner that would have set current Fox News heads’ hair on fire. Young people can see for themselves the results of such rotten leadership. (RELATED: Richard ‘Rachel’ Levine Declares ‘Summer of Pride’)

They watched the disaster in Afghanistan with desperate people hanging from fleeing US planes, 13 service members senselessly killed, and the Taliban our soldiers fought for 20 years flaunting our weaponry. A new State Department report clandestinely released late Friday blames the Biden administration for the spectacular atrocity. And if kids were taught the real story of this nation, they would know why it still stands despite weak men like Biden, Milley, and Levine. Because the men who founded it — for all the liberal scorn heaped on them as racist patriarchal tools — bolstered it with the greatest governmental document of all time. And last week, their creation, the Constitution, once more beat back the forces of tyranny and fanaticism besieging the land, now coming from inside academia and the government.

For decades, the university system defied the founding principle of the country as specified in its Declaration of Independence — “that all men are created equal.” This radical idea was immortally echoed by its best-known black leader, Martin Luther King, when he said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Alas, for King and country, his dream clashed with that of the American Marxists to tear apart the nation, as always in the guise of fairness or its most modern incarnations, diversity and equity.

The collegiate strategy was simple — establish a quota of the weightiest people on the victim scale, blacks, and admit them on the basis of their race, even most often over Asians and whites who are more qualified. That most admittees were advanced well beyond their ability to succeed, due to lower-level educational failure, and couldn’t graduate was their problem. The virtuous institutions had given them the opportunity and could thus crow about it. And they had the full backing of the Democratic Party, the most racially injurious political party in American history, a truth conveniently not taught.

But from out of the past, the drafters of the Constitution stopped them. Sagely, they conceived three co-equal branches of government. And last Thursday, one of them, the Supreme Court, found the academic racial Ponzi scheme unconstitutional, effectively ending Affirmative Action. The very next day, the Court upheld a founding constitutional right — freedom of speech — which the Democrat-run State (Colorado) sought to crush in favor of its current darling, the LGBTQ-plus movement. The Court essentially found that persons cannot be compelled, by word or work, to support any people, group, or cause with which they morally disagree.

So, indeed, on this Fourth of July, the Star-Spangled Banner yet waves and — unlike at the White House — higher than the “pride” flag. But it’s up to us citizens to keep America the land of the free and the home of the brave — by ousting the wicked and the stupid from power next year. For now, Happy Independence Day week.