Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding?
— from ‘Crito’ by Plato, 399 B.C.
A certain phrase never made sense to me, as a school kid:
“My Country, Tis of Thee…”
I was never sure what part of speech “Tis” might have been. An adjective? A verb? A preposition? What exactly does “Tis of Thee” mean?
But I sang it anyway. We all did.
“…Sweet Land of Liberty…”
I had been to church often enough to understand that “Thee” actually meant “You” and that poets often resorted to using “Thee” instead, when they wanted to rhyme with a word like “Liberty”.
But “Tis”? I didn’t recognize that word. And I still don’t.
These days, I hardly even recognize “My Country”.
And “Liberty” is problematic as well.
I don’t blame my school teachers for failing to explain these obscure phrases to us kids. They probably didn’t know what they meant, either.
We’re going to be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next month, which is actually a bit awkward, considering the political unrest evident here in My Country Tis of Thee. It feels kind of like celebrating a birthday party for your tattooed uncle, who got in a fistfight with your father at last year’s Thanksgiving dinner.
The uncle, in this case, being Uncle Sam.
The Pledge of Allegiance also posed conceptual issues, when I was a kid. For one thing, I had no idea what “Allegiance” meant.
Or the verb, “Pledge”. No, they weren’t talking about the furniture polish. This was a verb. Something you were expected to do, without knowing what, exactly, you were doing. As I understood the verb, it meant “to face the flag with your hand over your heart and recite words you don’t understand.”
All this singing and reciting was seemingly aimed at creating a sense of love for something called America, which was a large orange shape on the classroom geography map, below “Canada” and above “Mexico”. But America also included, in some sense, the millions of people who lived within that large orange shape, only a few dozen of whom I had ever had a chance to meet.
Based on the TV shows my family and I watched, a lot of those Americans were cowboys. But some were cowgirls, or housewives. Then we also had policemen, and men who worked in offices, and guys in the Army or Navy.
But I knew from my own personal experience that, in fact, most Americans were school teachers, or grocery clerks. The teachers were the ones who made us recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and the grocery clerks operated the cash registers.
Did I love my country? I definitely loved some of the people, if that’s what they were talking about. I definitely loved my parents, and my brother and sister. I had a crush on my second grade teacher, even though she was out of my league. I would say I loved my best friend, Larry, even when I had to try and throw him out at first base.
But I did not love my tattooed uncle, as you well can understand.
What I didn’t realize, as a kid, was how many tattooed uncles there are in America. From what I can tell, it’s like, 20% of the population.
In Plato’s Crito dialogue, Socrates has decided not to oppose his death sentence, imposed on him by a bunch of tattooed uncles. He feels honor bound to abide by the laws of his city, and drink the poison hemlock. His friend Crito disagrees: if the law is unjust, one may be permitted to disobey it. He thinks Socrates ought to reconsider and get the hell out of Athens. I think so, too.
So it’s very possible that, deep down, I am not patriotic. It’s possible that, were I given an unjust sentence, I would reconsider and get the hell out.
But for the time being, it suits me to keep singing “Tis of Thee”… even if I don’t know what it means.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.