Today is Flag Day

The Star Spangled Banner was written by Francis Scott Key, as a poem called "In Defense of Fort McHenry", off Baltimore Harbor, in September 1814 during the War of 1812.


Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard...

When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.

It is the flag just as much of the man who was naturalized yesterday as of the men whose people have been here many generations...

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." ... I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The hopes, goals and aspirations of America are of Freedom, Liberty, equal and even-handed justice, and equality... and they actually remain a work in progress, but while we wrangle today with so many divisive issues - let us remember that our country allows us all the liberty to speak our piece and we've set ourselves a truly noble goal "not because they are easy, but because they are hard."