Patriotic music

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Last night Oksana and children were singing patriotic songs around the dinner table. I don’t understand the words, but the music and expressions on their faces made it clear what it was.

The kids didn’t get them from public school. They have to have come from Oksana herself or private school, musical groups, camps or someplace else. It set me to reflecting on the patriotic music of my youth.

My children had of course heard The Star-Spangled Banner one way or another. Other tunes not so much. Despite a conspicuous lack of encouragement, I rattled off God Bless America, My Country ‘tis of Thee, and America the Beautiful. They could not have stood still for more than the first verse of each, and I don’t trust my memory much farther than that.

We didn’t get into martial music. I still remember The Battle Hymn of the Republic and The Marine Hymn from school days. These were legacy, songs of our parent’s generation. In the Vietnam era there were popular songs, more likely released as a matter of propaganda, such as The Ballad of the Green Beret and Brave Gallant Men. I can’t recall any such songs from the past half century.

Nor do I recall ever hearing my millennial children ever singing either patriotic or martial songs. They, and more importantly, their teachers would have considered it hokey at best, more likely, the perpetuation of what they would consider immoral notions of what a person and a country should be. Their generation accepted the legacy that had come their way without thought or thanks. Quite the contrary, they took every opportunity to criticize it. We will all concede that it was not without serious flaws. Every society is. However, some myths have to be accepted to perpetuate whatever good there may be.

I’m glad my family believes in Ukraine. Citizens of a healthy society should feel open to criticize it, but in doing so, commit themselves to their fellow citizens and to fixing the country’s flaws. The Anglosphere and Western Europe seem to have lost sight of the balance between these truths.

Graham