Fifteen years ago I wrote this short essay about how unusual our national anthem is when compared to those of other nations. Instead of offering pious hopes for our leaders (Great Britain) or warning citizens of the bloodthirsty armies of the enemy (France), it mostly asks and answers a single question: last night our flag was flying over Fort McHenry. Did the British army capture the fort, or is the flag still flying this morning?
Francis Scott Key wrote the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner" in 1814, though we didn't adopt the song as our anthem until 1931. At the end of this first verse he phrased the question thusly: "O say, does our star-spangled banner yet wave / O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"
His words take for granted that the land below the flag is the "land of the free and the home of the brave." Isaac hears the last couplet differently today. Perhaps you do too. Instead of asking whether the flag is still flying, the anthem now questions whether the land below the flag is still the land of the free and the home of the brave. The Trump administration's slide from antics to autocracy suggests that it is not.