While all of us are reading of — and hearing — an increasing clamor, particularly from the “woke” elite of the United States, to change the national anthem to some other song, such as “This Land Is Your Land,” we at the Daily Planet stand strongly in favor of keeping “The Star-Spangled Banner” as our national anthem because it features a wonderful melody and profound lyrics, with a colorful history behind it.

To the contrary, a June 30 story in The (London, U.K.) Guardian slammed our beloved national anthem by noting the following:

“Only in America is the most influential songwriter a slave-owning trial lawyer with exactly one hit. Worse, Francis Scott Key stole the melody from a British pub hymn that had been lingering in the 19th-century equivalent of the public domain. 

“The lyrics, all about him watching the Yankees and the Redcoats bomb the s--t out of each other for a whole day in Baltimore, could have carried the 19th-century equivalent of a parental advisory, too.

“It took a century and an act of Congress for the Star-Spangled Banner to become the American standard, which would seem proof of how catchy it isn’t...”

To the aforementioned rant from The Guardian, we say that it smacks of sour grapes from our former (but endearing) oppressors (Great Britain), who never got over the loss of the 13 colonies that grew into the United States, the freest and most prosperous country in world history.

“The Star-Spangled Banner,” regarded by many as a marvelous narrative, ties one individual’s experiences to the struggles of his country. 

We think Americans should not ashamed of our history or our identity. If “The Star-Spangled Banner” was good then, it’s good now. 

There is no need to edit history to conform to today’s idiocracy, wherein certain brainwashed and virtue-signaling citizens commonly resort to belittling tradition in the name of political correctness.