To Miss with Love by Snuffy, a British teacher, is back with a great story about a teachers’ tour of schools in India. The children sing the Indian national anthem. Then the principal asks the visiting British teachers to sing their national anthem, God Save the Queen.
I grab the arm of the teacher next to me in desperate need of solidarity. She looks straight at me, knowingly. We all know we’re dead. We all know we don’t know the words. We’re going to cook slowly, humiliated in agony, twisting in excruciating embarrassment …
. . . One of the Indian teachers sits at the piano and begins to play. The English national anthem? Of course she knows it. She doesn’t even need the sheet music. She knows the tune by heart.
So we begin. Our voices shake slightly, gathering strength as we continue. A sense of pride starts to build within our group. We look at each other and smile as we sing. Every now and then one of us stumbles slightly on a word, but the others hold strong and the hesitation disappears in a sea of near-pride and nationalism. . . . as I stand next to my fellow teachers, in front of these foreigners in a foreign land, I start to realise that this is the first and only time I have ever sung the British national anthem.
Americans get quite a bit of exposure to the Star Spangled Banner. The syntax is complex and the high notes are challenging. Could U.S. teachers sing it without fear? I think so.
Snuffy plans to visit New York City — if she can get a visa. The online form asks:
Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were you involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies?
Snuffy wonders if spies, saboteurs, terrorists and mass murderers check “yes” on the form.
About Joanne
I always wonder if anyone has ticked yes to that question.
You might want to compare that with G. K. Chesterton’s essay, What I Saw in America. He had the same questions about being asked if he were an anarchist, and came up with interesting answers.
A lot of people bring up the Nazi question on the immigration form (my recollection is that it used to ask whether you were a communist, too) as an indication of just how repressive and terrible the United States is.
The reality is that that question is there because it’s not exactly illegal to be a Nazi, anarchist, etc. in the United States; but it *is* illegal to not fill out the form truthfully.
Tino nailed it… in the U.S., you can be who you want to be; but, it’s illegal to lie about it in writing.
“The reality is that that question is there because it’s not exactly illegal to be a Nazi, anarchist, etc. in the United States; but it *is* illegal to not fill out the form truthfully.”
Huh?
If you’re an American, born here, who has never left, you may quite legally espouse all sorts of nasty ideas – they’re protected under the 1st Amendment. If you’re a foreigner espousing the same ideas, however, we don’t have to let you in, and if you lie about them we can jail you (although the usual remedy would be expulsion from the country).
Tino nailed it… in the U.S., you can be who you want to be; but, it’s illegal to lie about it in writing.
What if the person you want to be is a compulsive liar?
Anyway, I don’t think it’s legal anywhere to engage in sabotage, terrorist activities, or genocide. Just the definition of what is sabotage, terrorist activities or genocide changes from place to place.
France, Germany, the USSR, Spain, have all tried to erase the British national identity throughout the past centuries. Instead, it seems nothing more than apathy towards one’s community will succeed.