Literature to Engender Patriotism
(image via Pixabay)
The traitors, “vandals, and Visigoths” {as Arthur Dent would refer to them} responsible for the Capitol Hill Insurrection have reminded me of the theme song to Baretta (Don’t do the Crime if you can’t do the time), the short story “The Man Without a Country,” and the poem “Barbara Frietchie.”
Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er,
And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.
Honor to her! and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall’s bier.
Over Barbara Frietchie’s grave
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
Peace and order and beauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law;
And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town!
Is Barbara Frietchie’s work over? How many QAnon-ites and Parler “Patriots” mouthed the words of the Pledge of Allegiance without ever learning what they meant or believing in “one nation (under God) indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”?
As I mentioned recently, DJT has awokened old memories of stories and poems read long ago — stories and poems he and his minions would do well to read.
Did these people never read Sir Walter Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel”?
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand? —
If such there breathe, go, mark him well.” Sir Walter Scott
The best literature to engender patriotism is American history and the US Constitution. The second best are biographies: Anne Marbury Hutchinson, George Washington, Phillis Wheatley, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Abigail Adams, John Madison, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, etc. Poetry, whether Sir Walter Scott or Phillis Wheatley or John Greenleaf Whittier, also can inspire, and because of the rhyme and meter is easier to memorize than Thomas Paine’s essays. Don’t use that as an excuse to not read Paine, a man who unfortunately, is more known of than known.
As a former teacher, I cannot recommend too highly Schoolhouse Rock (easily available on DVD and YouTube), nor Edward Everett Hale’s “The Man Without a Country” and Stephen Vincent Benet’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster.”
This is/was a great nation. God willing, we will survive and thrive and be great again. As Crosby, Stills, and Nash sang “teach your children well.”
The second verse of Katherine Lee Bates’ “America the Beautiful” should be better known.
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw
Confirm thy soul in self-control
Thy liberty in law!
For adventure and excitement in poetry, read Mildred Plew Meigs or Alfred Noyes. For patriotism, read “Barbara Frietchie” (I dare you to read it without crying) or K. L. Bates or Robert Burns or T. B. Macauley. Read as much and as widely as you can. Eventually, you’ll find the works that inspire you.
