Kate Smith and God Bless America
The Philadelphia Flyers covered the statue of Kate Smith and made it look like the third ghost in Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”. Her offense was singing “That's Why Darkies Were Born”, which was also sung by Paul Robeson and was equally unmemorable for both. In this way management protected the wounded virtue of a faction finding moral certitude in a multitude of popular social media posts; posts all detached from reality and from any legitimate philosophy or spiritual faith.
The instigators who petitioning the hockey team resided as fragments of a swarm trading away the adulthood and dignity found as individuals for a prestige lacking dreams to pursue or accomplishments to celebrate. The subservient, enabling parties in management chose to indicate their purity by receiving effortless, addictive compassion as the drug of choice.
When Kate Smith first sang God Bless America on November 10, 1938, there was no bigger entertainer and no bigger patriot. This was the late 1930’s and the people were depressed and anxious about what each new day would bring. She wanted a song which would convey the faith that she had in the future and asked her friend Irving Berlin to help. He found a song he had written about twenty-two years ago and never published. If you watch the video I linked to, you will recognize the man who later awarded her the Medal of Freedom.
Kate Smith did make a definitive statement about race hatred and bigotry as WW II ended. There were 20,000 requests for copies of the following statement:
It seems to me that faith in the decency of human beings is what we must have more of, if there is to be a future for all of us in this world. We read in the papers every day about conferences on the best way to keep the peace. Well, I'm not an expert on foreign affairs—and I don't pretend to know all the complex things that will have to be done for a lasting peace. But I am a human being—and I do know something about people. I know that our statesmen—our armies of occupation—our military strategists—may all fail if the peoples of the world don't learn to understand and tolerate each other. Race hatreds—social prejudices—religious bigotry—they are all the diseases that eat away the fibers of peace. Unless they are exterminated it's inevitable that we will have another war. And where are they going to be exterminated? At a conference table in Geneva? Not by a long shot. In your own city—your church—your children's school—perhaps in your own home. You and I must do it—every father and mother in the world, every teacher, everyone who can rightfully call himself a human being. Yes, it seems to me that the one thing the peoples of the world have got to learn if we are ever to have a lasting peace, is—tolerance. Of what use will it be if the lights go on again all over the world—if they don't go on ... in our hearts.
The true objective of this faction was America. They didn’t go after 1930’s singers Evelyn Laye, Helen Morgan or Kat Thompson for committing similar offenses, because they didn’t sing “God Bless America”. The monument does not venerate the person as much as it testifies to the extraordinary achievements in producing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution which define the identity of America and the principles through which the country can be truly blessed.
The song “God Bless America” exalts the efforts of the Constitutional Convention which launched the perilous experiment placing primary faith in the inherent natural liberties of imperfect individuals constrained by a limited government; a government requiring members to recognize the dilemma of their own imperfection. Since the emergence of independent colonies and for all time Americans would be defined as sovereign individuals finding their identity in exercising pre-existing intangible liberties within bounds of voluntary self-restraint and accompanied by the hazards and uncertainties of personal freedoms. Their ethnicity, gender, class, and race would always be secondary expressions of humanity.
These documents stand in the path of those embracing a fiction proclaiming the infallible direction of human activity by self-proclaimed elites. The new rulers suffer a mental disorder in which their reason falls in love with itself, their insights are worshiped by them as absolutes, and their demeanor despises expressions of freedom and independence by others. For them, no comparison need be made to the legitimate spiritual beliefs or moral philosophies that sustained our founding or to perceptions of hideous outcomes to be suffered by the subjugated.
Flyers remove statue of late singer Kate Smith https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/flyers-remove-statue-late-singer-kate-smith-62543568
Paul Robeson - That's Why Darkies Were Born - 1931 https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=paul+robeson+that%27s+why+darkest+were+born&view=detail&mid=957E6B9397870F7DD56A957E6B9397870F7DD56A&FORM=VIRE0&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3dpaul%2brobeson%2bthat%2527s%2bwhy%2bdarkest%2bwere%2bborn%26form%3dANNTH1%26refig%3d937e7e64711d47c79fee5cec842fd362%26sp%3d1%26qs%3dRI%26pq%3dpaul%2brobeson%2bwhy%2bdar%26sk%3dPRES1%26sc%3d1-20%26cvid%3d937e7e64711d47c79fee5cec842fd362
Kate Smith called for racial tolerance in this forgotten 1945 radio address https://www.inquirer.com/arts/kate-smith-racist-radio-address-flyers-statue-20190425.html
Kate Smith Sings God Bless America https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=kate+smith+god+bless+america&qpvt=kate+smith+god+bless+america&view=detail&mid=724669BA7D80E531A2DA724669BA7D80E531A2DA&&FORM=VRDGAR
1939 HITS ARCHIVE: God Bless America - Kate Smith (her original recording) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGMHnNqAjrI
Ronald Reagan Honors Kate Smith with Medal of Freedom https://www4.bing.com/videos/search?q=text+ronald+reagan+honors+kate+smith&view=detail&mid=EDD4D8A20EB8C80843E6EDD4D8A20EB8C80843E6&FORM=VIRE
Thanks for posting that, Mike!