Patriotism for the disillusioned: Resurrection of American spirit in a song

IAmerican icons, lovingly recalled (Wiki Commons)

I spend most days looking for ethical issues in the United States, most particularly ? since I am the DC Ethical Issues examiner ? having to do with Washington, DC. Fortunately or unfortunately, because my hometown is also the capital of the nation, there’s lots of fodder for my verbal mill, and it is usually germane not only to DC, but to the nation.

This morning, a good friend in California ? a woman with whom I shared various sorts of heartbreak while we both reclaimed our lives from horrid marriages twenty years ago  ? sent me an amazing link. It’s a link that reminded me that for all the fault I can find with elected officials and their misuse of power, with the obscenely powerful corporations we have allowed to poison our land, with the unjust wars that have decimated a generation, with the corporate financial greed that has stolen the future of so many of us ? indeed a shining, beautiful spirit still lives in America.

This link demonstrates that George W. Bush was not able to pound the American spirit to death under concurrent useless wars. Dick Cheney was not able to riddle it with rot from the inside, perverting the intention of the Founding Fathers in order to satisfy his addiction to the dark concepts of his paranoid mind. Karl Rove has not been able to totally up-end truth and use the remaining empty concepts to smother the realities that underlie American life, American values, the American spirit. David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, John Ashcroft, John Yoo and a dozen other henchmen of the most devilish administration in American history have not been able to legislate, frighten or threaten American optimism, American spirit, American talent or American courage out of existence. The proof is here.

Do yourself a favor, click on the link and listen to this video offering from Keith Carradine and the organization Born Again American. To me, Carradine’s use of the Bible is a bit off-putting; I’d rather he had left it out and simply used the term Spirit or something more universal. But he appeals to a wide audience in any case, and for the truth of the sentiments, the inclusiveness in the production, and the beauty of the performances, his symbolic reference can easily be understood as such and the offering accepted in its entirety, as it was meant: A love poem to the real America, and a call to help reconstruct it for the good of us all.

I will write no more today. Keith Carradine has done it well enough.