At Least I Know I'm Free

I just listened to the song "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood: I don't think I'd ever heard it before. The refrain goes:

And I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you, and defend her still today.
’Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

This 1984 hit song, referenced casually by an American friend of mine in an e-mail, as if I—as if everyone—should know it, got me thinking. Some of the major American cultural points that I've failed to absorb have to do with the patriotic songs ingrained into Americans' consciousness.

For example, most Americans would hear the opening bars of this music and think "My Country ’Tis of Thee." I think "God Save the Queen." Although I watched the news coverage of the September 11 attacks with the same horror that gripped American observants, then coursed around the world in the events' aftermath, my knee jerk response was not "God Bless the USA"; the song received no play on Jamaican radio. I was not in the States to hear this song play at the 1984 Republican convention, or during the Gulf War. (Heck, I wasn't even alive during the 1984 Republican convention.)

Songs like "My Country ’Tis of Thee,""America the Beautiful," and "God Bless the USA" reproduce (both mirroring and propagating) the hegemonic pride/hubris that Americans are known for (and occasionally reviled for) worldwide, distilling American patriotism into Muzak. How important are such songs, and the knowledge thereof, to the conception, the (re)creation of an American? Is the performance of an American identity unfinished if the performer doesn't know the correct, the only, response to the casually asked question? How's that song go... "I'm proud to be an American..."

And what of those Americans who no longer feel free?