Sweet Land of Liberty
First published in my print column, The Nature of Things
Last week I had the good fortune of seeing Garrison Keillor in Denver performing his ‘Prairie Home Companion American Revival’ show. For a guy of almost 80, he seemed as spry and sharp as ever, singing and jigging on stage, lavishing the audience with his signature drollery. It was a great time.
One of the highlights of the event, for me, was before the commencement of the performance, when Garrison asked the audience to stand and sing the national anthem. And then again during intermission, we all stood to sing My Country ’Tis of Thee, This Land Is Your Land, and few other folk tunes, and—being the good Norwegian Lutheran that Garrison is—a couple old time hymns. I’m not gonna lie, I was singing around the resulting lump in my throat for most of it.
When was the last time you sang along with a few hundred fellow Americans celebrating our great nation? Aside from sporting events, when do we even have the opportunity to sing our National Anthem any more?
Oh I know we have our differences—our varying opinions and beliefs, and there’s our disparate backgrounds of ethnicity and religious upbringing—but put all those liberal leftists, conservative right-wingers, gun-wielding pro-lifers and stubborn agnostics in a single space and get them to singing, and something just south of magical happens.
The thought crossed my mind, in all my misty-eyed euphoria of the moment, that if we all did that more often—just got together and sang those good old songs, swaying together as a single choir—we’d be much more unified as a nation. And this got me to thinking about the changes I’ve seen over the years in our collective attitude toward our country, as a whole. We’re so much more cynical and jaded than we ever used to be. Distrustful, angry and suspicious.
I don’t claim to understand the exact reason for this shift, I believe there are multiple contributing factors. But I will say that the escalation in negativity and our general divisiveness, along with the overall distrust of the news media, does seems to coincide with the rise of social media interaction—including its use by our own political leaders.
As a former journalist and a self-proclaimed patriot, I am compelled to point out that freedom of the press, as outlined in our Constitution’s First Amendment (not second, not third, but first), is definitely not something we can afford to take for granted; without it, there can be no democracy. Along with delivering timely information on local and worldwide happenings, one of its very critical roles is to operate like a fourth branch of the government, holding politicians accountable, informing voters of their ideals, their words and their actions.
The fact that free press is under threat can only mean the “officials” are uncomfortable with transparency. All the rhetoric hurled at the news media, and the daily social media discourse disparaging journalists, feeds a growing public distrust of the press. The term “fake news” has become a phrase used to discredit the validity of information coming from journalists and particular news outlets, even going so far as to call the news media the “enemy of the people.”
I’m not saying every news channel out there always tells the whole truth, or that some of them aren’t under the influence of a particular political sway—that’s pretty blatant in most instances. Still, with many hard-working (sometimes life-risking) reporters constantly under attack, it is important to remember the critical role that the press plays in democracy—a democracy that ensures our rights as individuals.
All the freedoms outlined in the First Amendment go hand in hand, and work together for our protection from would-be authoritarians: freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble… Like how we did in Denver last week when several hundred people raised their voices in melodious harmony to sing, for a few glorious moments, as American people united.
