1. My Country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing: 

Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims' pride,

From ev-'ry mountain side Let freedom ring!

 

2. My native country, thee, Land of the noble free, Thy name I love:

I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills;

My heart with rapture thrills, Like that above.

 

3. Let music swell the breeze, And ring from all the trees   Sweet freedom's song;

Let mortal tongues awake, Let all that breathe partake;

Let rocks their silence break, The sound prolong.

 

4. Our fathers' God, to Thee, Author of liberty, To Thee we sing;

Long may our land be bright    With freedom's holy light;

Protect us by Thy might, Great God, our King!

 

I like the old patriotic songs, and just want to post them 

here, to help us remember how our great country got started. 

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America the Beautiful               

 

O beautiful for spacioius skies, For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain madesties  Above the fruited plain!

America! America! God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood   From sea to shining sea.

 

O beautiful for pilgrim fee, Whose stern, impassioned stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat   Across the wilderness!

America!  America!  God mend thine ev'ry flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law.

 

O beautiful for heroes proved  In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life!

America!  America!  May God thy gold refine,

Till all success be nobleness   And ev'ry gain divine.

 

O beautiful for patriot dream  That sees, beyond the years,

Thine alabaster cities gleam, Undimmed by human tears!

America!  America! God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood   From sea to shining sea.

 

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The Star-Spangled Banner

 

O 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, thro' the perilous fight,

O'er the ramparts we wathced, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air

Gave proof thro' 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?

 

O thus be it ever when free men shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war's desolation;

Blest with vic-t'ry and peace, may the heav'n rescued land

Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just;

And this be our motto: "In God is our trust!"

And the Star-spangled Banner in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

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God Bless America

 

Author: Irving Berlin, 1918; revised 1938

Spoken Introduction:
While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer. 

 

 God bless America, land that I love
Stand beside her and guide her
Through the night with the light from above
From the mountains To the prairies,
To the ocean white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home.

 

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(This was an e-mail forward, but we checked it out, and it is true.)

 

From a speech made by Capt. John S. McCain, US, (Rep)

who represents Arizona in the U.S. Senate:

 

 

As you may know, I spent five and one half years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. In the early years of our imprisonment, the NVA kept us in solitary confinement or two or three to a cell. In 1971 the NVA moved us from these conditions of isolation into large rooms with as many as 30 to 40 men to a room. This was, as you can imagine, a wonderful change and was a direct result of the efforts of millions of Americans on behalf of a few hundred POWs 10,000 miles from home.

One of the men who moved into my room was a young man named Mike Christian. Mike came from a small town near Selma, Alabama. He didn't wear a pair of shoes until he was 13 years old.

At 17, he enlisted in the US Navy. He later earned a commission by going to Officer Training School. Then he became a Naval Flight Officer and was shot down and captured in 1967.

Mike had a keen and deep appreciation of the opportunities this country, and our military, provide for people who want to work and want to succeed. As part of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some prisoners to receive packages from home. In some of these packages were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing. Mike got himself a bamboo needle.

Over a period of a couple of months, he created an American flag and sewed it on the inside of his shirt. Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike's shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance. I know the Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most important part of our day now, but I can assure you that in that stark cell, it was indeed the most important and meaningful event.

One day the Vietnamese searched our cell, as they did periodically, and discovered Mike's shirt with the flag sewn inside, and removed it. That evening they returned, opened the door of the cell, and for the benefit of all us, beat Mike Christian severely for the next couple of hours.

Then, they opened the door of the cell and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well as we could. The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept. Four naked light bulbs hung in each corner of the room. As I said, we tried to clean up Mike as well as we could. After the excitement died down, I looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim light bulb with a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was my friend, Mike Christian. He was sitting there with his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received, making another American flag.

He was not making the flag because it made Mike Christian feel better. He was making that flag because he knew how important it was to us to be able to pledge our allegiance to our flag and country.

So the next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance, you must never forget the sacrifice and courage that thousands of Americans have made to build our nation and promote freedom around the world. 

Let's remember our duty, our honor, and our country.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."