Sometimes, I listen to people singing the Star-Spangled Banner – you know, at sports events, stuff like that. Which is great and all, I think it’s a great song, but why do people only sing the first verse?

In this case, it goes like this:

O, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
    And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
    Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

It ends with a question – does the star-spangled banner yet wave? And in a sense, it is a fitting question if you look at the United States of today. Since we omit the next three verses and never sing it, we take out the good stuff from it, bringing to mind Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous comment “America is great because she is good, and when she ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”

So it ends with a question – and this question has resounded over America for a great many years. Does the banner yet wave? Is she intact? Is she still there, the beacon of freedom through the world, shining gallantly for liberty and justice as the red, white and blue snaps in the wind?

It was with the same amount of tremor and hesitation that Francis Scott Key watched through the night, seeking indication of whether the British had captured Fort McHenry or not. And the jubilant sight he beheld when the large flag was raised in the early morning is recorded in the following verses.

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
    Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
    In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner!! Oh long may it wave!
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution!
    No refuge could save the hireling and slave
    From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave!
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And it ends with this benediction.

O, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
    Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
    And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

It is a terrible tragedy when the divine intervention in creating a new country, a home for the refugees of the world, is sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. So the question still stands. “Does the star-spangled banner yet wave?”

Maybe Heaven itself will answer that question. “Yet a little while”, a soft voice might whisper in the night, “yet a little while.”