“By Dawn’s Early Light,” Photomechanical print by Edward Percy Moran, public domain from the Library of Congress, available via Wikimedia Commons

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

To nourish patriotism, some Iowa legislators want to force public school students to sing a song with lyrics gloating about “the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave” that doomed slaves who, in exchange for freedom, fled to the British side in the War of 1812.

That is one take on House Study Bill 587, a proposal to mandate daily classroom singing of a verse or all four verses from our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The “Banner” was first known as “The Defense of Fort McHenry,” when the words were penned by slave owner Francis Scott Key in 1814. (Britain had also offered freedom to the thousands of slaves who fled to its side in the Revolutionary War.)

Most know by heart “the rocket’s red glare, the bomb bursting in air” and “the land of the free and the home of the brave” in the anthem’s first verse. But lurking in the third verse are these contradictory lines:

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.

HSB 587 mandates that school children sing a verse from the anthem and all four verses be sung on “on patriotic occasions.”

Perhaps because of the wording in the third verse—or preference for “America the Beautiful”—the United States did not adopt the song as its national anthem until 1931.

Historian Jefferson Morley noted that Key considered Black people to be “a distinct and inferior race” and would emancipate them only if they would be shipped back to Africa. Further, Morley wrote, “The elevation of the banner from popular song to official national anthem was a neo-Confederate political victory, and it was celebrated as such…When supporters threw a victory parade in Baltimore in June 1931, the march was led by a color guard hoisting the Confederate flag.”

Dubious proposals like HSB 587 come up in most legislative sessions. That bill shows why we should drop the notion “It can’t get any worse.”

Many adopted that concept as salve after Donald Trump became president. The thought that things couldn’t get worse again offered solace after January 6, 2021, and even after recent Iowa legislative sessions. But with Trump on track to become the Republican nominee again, the current legislative session, and the continuing reign of Governor Kim Reynolds, let’s face it. Things are getting worse. For example:

• House File 2082 would continue Iowa’s punishment of transgender people and their families by “removing civil rights protections for transgender people,” a Des Moines Register editorial noted. The bill “would make it OK to hate.” (That bill mercifully died in a January 31 subcommittee.)

•U.S. Representatives Ashley Hinson and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Governor Reynolds, and other GOP elected officials continue to ignore public demand for reasonable gun safety measures, because they won’t stop every shooting. By that logic, we should abandon speed limits, not have laws against child abuse and forget about any measures regarding public health or safety. As everyone knows, despite such laws we still have reckless and drunken drivers and highway fatalities, parents and caretakers still harm children, and air and water pollution still endanger public health. 

Laws mirror what we expect from one another. Legislators, however, too often will pass or run from bills depending on whether a measure serves their personal beliefs or might assist their re-election.

• Our current governor and legislature will continue to proclaim they are cutting taxes, while denying that they are underfunding ways to feed the hungry, aid the impoverished, care for the elderly, and support public education. And they will continue to ignore the 1927 admonition of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

They will assert that indoctrination efforts like House Study Bill 587 will make Iowa great again.

So, yes, things can get and are getting worse.

The question is whether the upcoming November 5 election can make them better by restoring the legislature to body of compromise and good.

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Editor’s note from Laura Belin: Republican State Representatives Henry Stone and Phil Thompson advanced House Study Bill 587 from a subcommittee on January 24. It was on the agenda for the House Education Committee’s January 30 meeting, but chair Skyler Wheeler did not bring it up, which may indicate the majority party is considering an amendment.