The Spanish Anthem

Now that Blogger has stopped sucking...

Think Progress has found an inconvinient fact. Well, inconvenient for racist anti-immigrant xenophobes that think a translation of the National Anthem is an act of treason.

The right wing is up in arms over a new version of the Star-Spangled Banner written in Spanish. Last week President Bush stated that “the national anthem ought to be sung in English.” Yesterday Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced a resolution requiring the Star-Spangled banner to be sung only in English:

That flag and that song are a part of our history and our national identity. … That’s why in 1931 Congress declared the Star-Spangled Banner our national anthem. That’s why we should always sing it in our common language, English.

In his press release, Alexander said the Star-Spangled Banner has “never before…been rendered in another language.”

But in 1919, the U.S. Bureau of Education commissioned a Spanish-language version of “The Star Spangled Banner.” The State Department’s website also features four-separate versions of the anthem in Spanish.

Must be a little like the fact that treaty that the Founding Fathers signed declaring that America wasn't a 'Christian Nation.' I guess reality really does have a liberal bias.

The point here is that if translating the Anthem helps any new American to better understand what it is to be an American or to understand and appreciate our history, why would any patriotic American stand in the way?

Any effort to quash the Spanish language is, at its root, racist.

Immigration Nuestro Himno Francis Haffkine Snow Lamar Alexander