Our View - Thursday

ONE ANTHEM FOR THE U.S.A.
Spare us a ‘black national anthem'

   Thank you kindly, Rene Marie, but we already have a black national anthem. It's the same one enjoyed by whites, Latinos, Asians, rednecks, hippies, Christians, atheists, Republicans and Democrats.

   We don't need a special national anthem for one racial community in a country that's one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

   Just three days before the Fourth of July, Marie walked onto a podium in Denver to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" - the official national anthem of the single best place on earth for people of every race, religion, creed and nationality to prosper in freedom. She had been invited by Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" before his state of the city address. She accepted the invitation.

   But Marie didn't sing our national anthem. Instead, she concocted a song by singing lyrics from "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," known as the black national anthem, to the music of "The Star Spangled Banner." Instead of "Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light...," the mayor and his audience heard "Let our rejoicing rise, high as the list'ning kies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea...," etc.

   "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" is a beautiful song, which can ge heard at: http://www.black-network.com/anthem.htm.

   The song is genuinely patriotic, and above all religious. If it were a "national anthem," our country's proselytizing atheists would go berserk. It contains lyrics about "heaven." It ends with "God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who has brought us thus far on the way; Thou who has by Thy might, led us into the light, Keep us forever in the path, we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee, Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee, shadowed beneath thy hand, May we forever stand, True to our God, True to our native land."

   It's such a great song that it should get top consideration the next time some congressman embarks upon one of those futile quests to establish a new national anthem. Past efforts have pushed for "God Bless America" and "This Land is Your Land."

"Lift Ev'ry voice and Sing" is probably the best of the songs that could, but don't, serve as the national anthem. It's patriotic, inspiring, and respectful of a creator who's far greater than even teh greatest country on earth. 

   But we can't have two national anthems, one for black Americans and the other for whites. America has been a blessing to blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians and people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds from all over the world. More than a melting pot, the United States serves as a safe haven of unity. Slavery had flourished in this world for thousands of years before the United States was founded, and the practice survived in this country for only our earliest years. As early as the 1750s, when colonists were battling for their sovereignty and before we were a country, anti-slavery sentiment ran deep.

Ending slavery was the central goal of many who wanted to form the United States as a nation of freedom. Revered white abolitionists, such as William Lloyd Garrison, argued that slavery was a sin against God. Others, including John Brown, encouraged armed uprising among slaves. We fought a civil war that centered largely on a willingness of white Americans to give their lives for the goal of ending slavery.

   Have blacks been tortured and discriminated against in the United States? Does this country have a shameful history of race-based civil rights atrocities? Absolutely, on both counts.

   Unlike much of the rest of the world, however, black people can and do succeed to the highest levels of success and freedom in American society because blacks and whites have fought and died for civil rights.

   It has been well over 100 years since anyone served as a state-sanctioned slave in the United States. Today, we're a country so successful that we have the luxury of peacefully debating issues like race-based affirmative action. We're so advanced that we have a multi-racial candidate leading the presidential campaign who's referred to as "post racial" - whatever that means.

   Much of the world looks evil by comparison. In Africa, hundreds of thousands of black people live in slavery today, simply because they were born into the wrong tribes. In Mauritania, the United Nations estimates some 90,000 black Mauritanians are enslaved by Arab Muslims. In Niger, which didn't outlaw slavery until 2003, 8 percent of the population remains enslaved. Anti-Slavery International estimates some 27 million people live in slavery today, the largest number in history, mostly in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.
 
   America isn't perfect and it's not entirely free. It's not always an easy place to be black. But it's arguably the best place in the world to be black, yellow, brown, white, or any other color for that matter. We are the greatest nation on earth because we are one people united by a desire for freedom. We're the land of the free and the home of the brave, as summed up in the only national anthem we need. We have a black national anthem. It's called "The Star Spangled Banner."

FIREWORKS BANS CAUSE TROUBLE

   Colorado Springs forbids all fireworks that require fire to ignite. This overreaching ordinance makes a mockery of law, and it may actually enhance fire danger due to the law of unintended consequences.

   Nearly anyone in any Colorado Springs neighborhood will attest that explosive fireworks, which require fire to ignite, are abundant. They explode morning, noon and night for days preceding and following the Fourth of July. Most are brought in from nearby Wyoming, which allows most fireworks. Short of a border wall, they won't be stopped.

   Colorado Springs police lack the resources to respond to nonemergency calls for assistance. Children lighting Black Cats and stink bombs are nonemergencies, until they burn something down.

   Amateur fireworks can be a menace, starting fires, causing injuries, alarming household pets and keeping people awake at night. But unenforceable laws can do more harm than good.

  Famed economist John Lott found that fireworks kill an average of six people each year, including those killed by lawful professional fireworks. He notes that 15 times more children under the age of 10 drown in bathtubs. Injuries from fireworks occur in about the same numbers today as they did in 1976, even though Americans use about 10 times more fireworks today. About 9,700 people are injured by fireworks, and Lott found that most of the injuries are minor. Some 200,000 people, by contrast, are injured by bathtubs, electricity, falls and hot water. Fireworks are a relatively low-level menace.

   Now consider the law of unintended consequences, in which worse things result when common activities are forced underground.

   "Banning personal use of fireworks might actually result in more accidental fires if some of those who try to avoid getting caught set them off in remote fields," Lott wrote in National Review.

   Nearly 100 percent of people who unlawfully light a firecracker go unpunished. It may be time for the city to consider less sweeping regulation, with an eye toward fireworks policies that might actually work.