There is a song that I heard many years ago that I think about from time to time, particularly on July 4th weekend. The song “The House I Live In” was made famous by Frank Sinatra. It is wonderful for its universal simplicity invoking imagery of places found to be in almost every town in this country.
Decades ago he sang about the faces that he sees “all races and religions that’s America to me.” He sings about the grocer and the butcher, of children in the playground and of the right to speak your mind out.
But do the lyrics ring true today?
All races and religions is a concept that is under attack. We respond to campaign rhetoric pitting one group against another demonizing those we see as somehow different. Many see a racism that is ascendant after years of progress. There is a media narrative that promotes conflict between groups because it sells.
Sinatra sings of the children in the playground conjuring images in our minds of our childhood or our children on swings or jumping rope or playing ball. But does your mind see children taking cover when gunfire rings out?
When Sinatra sings of “the church, the school, the clubhouse” did you think of a peaceful Sunday service, of children seated in their school eager to learn? Or did your mind go to the images from Sandy Hook where children were killed, or a Charleston church where people gathering to worship were killed by racism and gunfire? When he sings about a clubhouse did you think of an Orlando nightclub or an office holiday party in San Bernardino?
Probably not because those are not what we aspire to see in what we are as a nation. We must refuse to allow hate-filled spasms inflicting death to define us.
Toward the end of the song Sinatra sings “But especially the people, that’s America to me.”
Yes the people, a land of people who are welcoming, who believe in freedoms and rights hard-won across the centuries by leaders and ordinary people. People risked their lives crossing oceans or on battlefields or in protests when they faced firehoses or police dogs or beatings for as Sinatra said “the right to speak their mind out.”
This is no time for that vision of our American House to be altered. This is no time to give in. This is no time to allow others to conjure our darkest fears and assumptions about other people and manifest themselves in our minds and hearts, or worse yet in our actions.
For in embracing our darkest impulses we then become like those we despise. Do we not take on the mantel of discrimination, oppression, hate and discord that our founders sought to cast off?
In the State of Virginia’s statutes of religious freedom written by Thomas Jefferson and passed in 1786 he wrote: “all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
That statute separating Church and State and promoting religious tolerance endures. But Jefferson also envisioned a time when the politics could change so in the statute he wrote:
“The rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such as would be an infringement of natural right.”
Jefferson defined that freedom as a natural right. One wonders if he’d view limitations on people of certain religions as an attempt to narrow that natural right?
On the 4th we’ll celebrate our freedoms and our open society. But it’s also a time to recognize that many of our families are descended from people who came here or were brought here.
We should recall there was a time when our ancestors bore the pain of being seen as outsiders. Should we further the strains of intolerance suffered by our grandparents or parents?
Sinatra’s song should remind us that this country is the House we live in. We’ve built a great nation, a nation that is indivisible and a nation that despite campaign rhetoric is a leader and an example to the world in so many ways.
No amount of sloganeering to sow seeds of discord can take away our history or take away our ability to adapt and innovate over and over again. Negative messaging must not be allowed to force cracks in foundations of inclusiveness and unity that are the rock upon which our American House has stood for 240 years.
Be thankful that you live in this nation; a house that has room for all but also a house that we can improve. Our house was built by people who founded this country “in order to form a more perfect union.”
We are not there yet. But we must not let any weariness we feel be our excuse to slide backwards on the rights of humanity, on the American values that were written into the founding documents or even sung by Frank Sinatra in the last century.
‘The House I Live In’
Written by LEWIS ALLAN, EARL ROBINSON
Performed by Frank Sinatra
What is America to me
A name, a map, or a flag I see
A certain word, democracy
What is America to me
The house I live in
A plot of Earth, a street
The grocer and the butcher
And the people that I meet
The children in the playground
The faces that I see
All races and religions
That’s America to me
The place I work in
The worker by my side
The little town the city
Where my people lived and died
The howdy and the handshake
The air a feeling free
And the right to speak your mind out
That’s America to me
The things I see about me
The big things and the small
The little corner newsstand
Or the house a mile tall
The wedding and the churchyard
The laughter and the tears
The dream that’s been a growing
For a hundred and fifty years
The town I live in
The street, the house, the room
The pavement of the city
Or the garden all in bloom
The church the school the clubhouse
The million lights I see
But especially the people
That’s America to me
