America the Awesome

For all the pomp and circumstance of its presentation, there is something admirably humble about America’s national anthem. Britain’s anthem is cartoonish, with its repeated entreaties to “save” an already-well-secured monarch and its insistence that God is destined to “scatter” the “knavish” enemies of the crown. France’s anthem is utopian, with all those references to the “child of the fatherland,” the “day of glory,” and the prospect of “impure blood” watering the fields. But America’s? America’s has about it that quality of the unknown. From the outset, it poses questions. “O...