Jan. 30, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
03:54
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Hey, Dennis. | |
| Thanks for asking me to do it. | |
| So, how many views does it have in these three days? | |
| Oh, I haven't checked today, but I mean, it's in the hundreds of thousands. | |
| I know that. | |
| Yeah, I'm sure it'll be in the millions over the next couple of weeks. | |
| And it should be. | |
| It's a very important subject. | |
| First, explain to people the charge that the National Anthem... | |
| 700,000 right now? | |
| Okay, that's what Sean told me. | |
| It's 700,000 now, so it'll reach a million by the end of the week. | |
| So, what is the charge of its racism? | |
| Well, the charge centers on the third stanza of the Star Spangled Banner, which, by the way, nobody knows. | |
| I mean, it's not like you're out there at the ballgame singing all four stanzas, but there's a line in there in which Francis Scott Key mentions the Hirelings and slaves, which is how he referred to the British forces who were fighting in that Battle of Fort McHenry that he witnessed. | |
| So, you know, the use of the word slaves alerted people to the idea that maybe he was talking about a unit of Royal Marines that was composed of freed slaves that the British had recruited into this unit who then went on missions, you know. | |
| Right. | |
| So first of all, my dear listeners, you have to understand the charge is made on something nobody knows, the third stanza. | |
| Nobody knows the second. | |
| But there are three parts to the National Anthem. | |
| Of course, only the first is sung, and they could not find anything even there, even with their microscopic... | |
| Findings of racism. | |
| They couldn't find anything there. | |
| So it was in the third stanza. | |
| Then it's because of the words hirelings and slaves. | |
| And as you point out, that was used elsewhere. | |
| It is a derogatory term for your enemy. | |
| Is that correct? | |
| Yeah. | |
| What I did in looking into this was, well, one of the things, first I looked to see this Francis Scott Key in any of his writings come out and say, Yes, that's what I was referring to, and there's no record of that. | |
| So the next thing I did was look into that construction, hirelings and slaves. | |
| Like, what does that mean exactly? | |
| And what I found was it was used a lot at that time period, referring to things that had nothing to do with the United States, nothing to do with our institution of slavery. | |
| It was just a kind of general put-down. | |
| That people used when referring to foreign armies or anybody in the pay of a foreign government. | |
| Right. | |
| So that was the phrase that was used. | |
| You have a hilarious story there about catching German spies. | |
| Tell the story. | |
| Oh, catching German spies. | |
| What was the story? | |
| Yeah, they would ask the guy... | |
| That's okay. | |
| They would ask the guy if he knew the third stanza. | |
| Right. | |
| Right, yes, during the Battle of the Bulge. | |
| I'm sorry, I was still in the War of 1812. That's quite a right, yes. | |
| Right, when the Germans were infiltrating in World War II during the Battle of the Bulge and they sent infiltrators behind our lines dressed as Americans, sometimes people would be caught, suspected of being these spies. | |
| And they were asked if they knew, like, the third stanza of the Star-Spangled Banner. | |
| And if anyone knew that, they figured that was a spy, because no normal American knows that. | |
| That is just one of the great stories. |
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