(Video above: Cliff Sims discusses the National Anthem on Yellowhammer Radio)
During Tuesday’s episode of Yellowhammer Radio, host Cliff Sims warned that liberals are trying to use Colin Kaepernick’s sit-down protest during the playing of the National Anthem as a cultural “flash point” to spark a movement to eradicate “The Star Spangled Banner” for being racist.
Mr. Sims noted that the tactics being used in the wake of Mr. Kaepernick’s protest mirror the movement to eliminate the Confederate Battle Flag from the culture after a “white supremacist idiot” killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston last year. As a result of the social pressure, even the popular “Dukes of Hazzard” reruns were pulled from TV Land because the iconic “General Lee” car in the program had a Confederate Flag painted on its roof.
“They use these kind of flash points as a ‘cultural cleansing’ opportunity,” Mr. Sims explained. “I think that’s what is about to happen with the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ You’re already seeing it. If you Google search ‘Star Spangled Banner’ right now, you get things like, ‘Colin Kaepernick Is Righter Than You Know: The National Anthem Is a Celebration of Slavery.’
“I’m telling you, the Star Spangled Banner is about to be under attack by the Left.”
In other examples over the last several days, Black Lives Matter activist Shaun White wrote that he will “never stand again” for the current National Anthem because the author was “a terrible human being;” popular lifestyle publication Paste Magazine posted an article praising Kaepernick for taking on “our racist, warmongering National Anthem;” and self-described “anti-racism strategist” Tariq Nasheed tweeted that the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ was “written by a slave owner to defend slavery.”
Critics of the Anthem point to the little-known third stanza of the poem from which it was derived. In the verse, the author, Francis Scott Key, writes that there will be “no refuge” for mercenaries and slaves who fought against the United States during the War of 1812. Mr. Key was also a slaveholder. His poem did not become the National Anthem until it was set to the current music some 100 years after it was written.
On Tuesday, Mr. Sims defended the anthem as its sung today as “aspirational,” and pointed specifically to the line, “the land of the free and the home of the brave” as a description of “what the United States is and aspires to be.”
“Francis Scott Key was a thirty-five-year-old attorney and amateur poet,” Sims explained. “He was on a British ship off the coast of Baltimore and witnessed the bombardment of Ft. McHenry (during the War of 1812). Now, why was he on the boat? He was basically being held prisoner. He had gone to the boat in his capacity as an attorney to try to free other captives. While he was there he found out about the plan to bombard Ft. McHenry, so the British couldn’t let him leave.
“And as he went to sleep that night, through the smoke, he could still see the giant U.S. flag waving over Ft. McHenry. When he awoke the next morning, he rushed to the side of the ship to see if that flag was still there, because he knew if it was still flying, the Americans had withstood the bombardment and still held control (of the fort). He saw that it was still there, and ran back down and told all the prisoners it was still there, and there was a huge cheer… Then he wrote the song.
“So when he says, ‘O! say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?’ In other words, he’s saying ‘The first thing I saw this morning was the flag that was waving last night when I went to sleep.’ Then he describes the flag. And then, when he gets to the end, what a powerful line when he says, ‘O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?’ What could be more aspirational, a better description of what the United States is and aspires to be — ‘The land of the free and the home of the brave’? But the Left has decided, ‘This is our opportunity. We must eradicate this from American culture.’ And I’m telling you it’s coming.”
When asked by Yellowhammer Radio co-host Scott Beason how liberals were going to achieve their goal, Mr. Sims said he expected them to shame people into submission.
“It will be social pressure,” he said, “it always is.”
The full clip of the radio segment can be heard in the YouTube video above. To subscribe to the Yellowhammer Radio podcast on iTunes, click here.
