Columnist – John Sammon
I can’t figure it out, and I’ve thought about it, but why is “God bless America” a popular saying? It seems somehow, elitist, exclusionary. I mean, if we go by inference, what’s between the lines, or what remains unsaid, if God blesses America, what about the rest of the world?

Why would God bless America if he did bless it (assuming God is a he)?

I never hear anyone say, God bless France. Or, God bless the United Arab Emirates. I’ve never heard a foreigner say, God bless my particular country.

Many people over the centuries have invoked God’s name including soldiers when they conquered other countries by saying “God is with us.”

But God bless America?

This seems to be a peculiarly American wish. First of all, if God only blesses America, and doesn’t bother to bless Uruguay, then God only represents America. God is supposed to be the God of all people, believers and non.

This saying seems at odds with what every major religion on the face of the earth claims, the universality of God, in other words, my God is the God—-of all people. I never hear the Pope say the Catholic God is only God over America. If God only blesses America, he must be mostly America’s God, and not the God of Mongolia.

When you say God bless America, America only makes up about five percent of the world’s population. What about the rest? They don’t matter?

What if I made it even more exclusionary and said God bless Reno? Everybody else is left out. Now, I’m sure God could find something nice about Reno to want to bless it. It has gambling, and it has hills that turn golden in the sunset. But if you said Gold bless Reno, and reasonable people heard you say that, I’m certain most would say that sounds a little bit foolish.

They’d think you were a moron. God bless Reno?

Why should God bless America?

Why should God bless an artificial border created by men, as women had very little to do with both the Louisiana and Gadsden purchases of 1807 and 1853, that occupies a 3,000-mile swath of the North American Continent, and was created largely by purchase, or outright conquest, from its original native inhabitants, and Spaniards who had come before? A confederation of states ruled from the District of Columbia, a tiny piece of land stolen from Native American Indians, so named for the Italian explorer Columbus who mistakenly thought he was in India and thus called them Indians?

Why would God bless this area of land and the people in it? If we go back a short hundred years, it must be obvious he (God – assuming God is a man) didn’t bless everybody. How could he? Native Americans were conquered, annihilated or placed on reservations where they were sometimes starved by the government. Women were as cattle to their husbands and didn’t have the right to work or vote. Blacks were slaves. Mexicans were considered greasers by the ruling elite.

The drawn up Constitution which said “We the people,” left everybody out except white, rich land-owning founders.

Would God in his infinite wisdom bless such a land?

Right wing haters and nuts will accuse me of being against God and America, and I’m really not. It just seems that way. It’s my manner. I question things.

Maybe God blessing America is a more modern thing. He (God) has only done it since the 1930s. He ignored us before, but he blesses us now.

Originally, God Bless America was a song coined by composer Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidore Beilin), a Jewish immigrant from Russia, as he languished at an army post in the U.S. during World War 1. Its opening stanza was copied from an old Yiddish tune called When Mose Leads his Nose, and later became a popular song in the 1930s sung by Kate Smith. The saying seemed to take on special importance during the Red Scare days of the 1950s when Americans thought they were going to be wiped out by Godless heathen Russia in a nuclear war. So paranoia, some founded in reality, some not, may be behind this statement’s popularity.

But we haven’t answered the question. Why would God bless America? Why would he want to? Is it because we are better than other people? Is it because we have a higher standard of living than many other impoverished countries?

Does God consider America his best creation, his finest achievement, the cream of the crop?

For God to bestow his special favor on Americans, there has to be a reason. I realize that God bless America is essentially a request. We’re saying, God, please bless America. But why would God? And why don’t we want him to bless the people of other countries?

We seem to have many of the same problems other countries do, a higher crime rate, poverty, pollution, drugs.

Isn’t this a bit like a few of us forming an exclusive club? And to make ourselves feel better, saying to others “keep out?” This is only for us. It seems to imply ownership of God. Is it because we think better of ourselves than we do of others, many of whom are less fortunate?

Shouldn’t it be instead, God bless all good people, wherever they can be found?

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Some of Ike’s thoughts:

“Teachers lie, politicians lie, “experts” lie, religious leaders lie, historians lie, books lie, just about everyone lies either to protect their special interests or because they mindlessly repeat the lies they have been told since childhood.”…Ike Ridley

• Columbus didn’t discover America.
• Slavery didn’t come from Black people selling each other.
• Nazi Death Camps were not history’s greatest mass murder.
• Lincoln never freed a single slave.

Ike on America

America was never intended to be a democracy and it never has been; despite the lies you’ve been told all your life. The U.S. constitution only gave the vote to white, male landowners; even poor white males were not allowed the vote . . . and they ignored blacks, women, Hispanics, “Native Americans” and others they left out. Slowly this rule was changed until almost 200 years later in 1964 when every adult was “given the right to vote”, but that’s not the point. What are you allowed to vote for?

America is a country born of hypocrisy and nurtured in racism and oppression. How stupendous a hypocrite do you have to be to write a document that declares “All men are created equal” while at that very moment you have two hundred human beings chained in your back yard working as your slaves? America’s political system (which was designed by these hypocrites) is no better that a shell game which gives rich people control and the rest of us the shaft.

Yes, America needs you, but for what? Certainly not to make decisions about what will happen in this country! They need you to die on a sand dune when they want to control Iraqi oil fields, or to pay thousands in taxes every year to pay for their limousines, cruise missiles and nuclear weapons, or to work for minimum wage in their stores and factories to pay for their mansions and swimming pools.

Ike on Religion

Religion is a fairy tale for adults, a scam run by priests, ministers, rabbis, nuns, witch doctors, bishops and popes so that suckers will pay for their big houses, fine clothes and BMW’s. As scary as it might sound, you alone are responsible for what happens in your life, not some imaginary spook living in a paradise in the sky . . . not some evil goblin living underground in a fiery pit . . . You!

Ike on “Weapons of Mass Destruction“

Yes, the U.S. provided Saddam with the only Weapons of Mass Destruction that he actually had (we won’t count the imaginary ones Little Bushy lied about). The U.S. built Saddam’s military into the fourth largest armed force in the world, until Big Bushy in 1991 turned around and blew up many of the weapons Reagan had given Saddam, killing a quarter million Iraqi soldiers and civilians.

Ike on Black Love and Marriage

As African people move into the new millennium, a quick survey of our people shows that most of us suffer from the effects of living in a loveless society. After surviving for hundreds of years in a society that clearly doesn’t love us, we have adopted the same attitude. We don’t love ourselves, we don’t love our communities, we don’t love our families, we don’t love our women, we don’t love our children and we don’t love our men.

AND MUCH MORE !!!

….Go Read it!

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