Shan-ul-Hai

Parsing a Country Song - “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” #1



Posted: Sunday, April 27, 2008

by
Globally Rational

I often hear country music songs that try to convince people to support certain political issues without actually presenting any real evidence. Their purpose is just to appeal to your emotions. Today I present the first two stanzas from Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" (the whole song would be too long, so I'll continue this in the future).

American girls and American guys

Well always stand up and salute

Well always recognize

When we see old glory flying

Theres a lot of men dead

So we can sleep in peace at night

When we lay down our head

My daddy served in the army

Where he lost his right eye

But he flew a flag out in our yard

Until the day that he died

He wanted my mother, my brother, my sister and me

To grow up and live happy

In the land of the free.

So he starts out by explaining a familiar experience, where you feel thankful for the people who gave their lives to make this country a better place. But then he goes on to talk about his own personal experience, where he links his dad's military service to the flag and the freedom. He chooses not to mention that his dad served in Korea, where our freedom wasn't really at stake it was more for the sake of protecting the Koreans, and we only kinda halfway accomplished the job. Also, he uses key emotional words like "served", "lost", "flag", "died", "brother/mother/sister", "grow up", "happy", and "land of the free". We automatically get a fuzzy feeling when we think about his dad serving in the army and flying the flag for his kids it insinuates that the flag in the yard somehow directly allowed his kids to "grow up and live happy in the land of the free".

I'll grant the fact that patriotism tends to have a positive influence sometimes, but insinuating such a direct connection just causes people to be artificially inspired based on no actual facts. I actually find myself inspired every time I listen to that song too; when you combine the music with the lyrics, it triggers the release of hormones that makes me want to kill all the Muslims which is pretty impressive, considering the fact that 100% of my relatives are Muslim.

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Shan-ul-Hai, the chief author of Globally Rational, is a self-described cosmopolitan scientist.  His articles typically involve the application of evidence-based logic to some of the world's most interesting and thought-provoking affairs.  His background as a Pakistani-American supplements his training as a scientist and his skill as a writer, leading to a myriad of of unique perspectives.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by straight talk
 3 years 282 days ago.
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A good article and opinion However, might I add my own thoughts? When one places Korea into a perspective of what was transpiring in the world at that time, history and fact, while we as a nation were not under direct attack we were being threatened by an idology that would if allowed to fester could have grown into a real threat. Now let me ask you this. China who everyone feels is not a threat is pending untold billions secretly and otherwise on their military, why? Who is threatening them? So what is their agenda? Were they not the source of the stalemate in Korea? Well once again I turn to history, facts as written, espoused and said. So Korea while not a direct threat to our nation was and is by nature of our not finishing the job still a direct threat to us and our very being.
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