Some time ago I was driving behind a car that bore a bumper sticker that admonished me: “Be a patriot! Support your government.” Well, I felt rather smug about it, because I had just sent in my income tax, and I felt that I was supporting my government pretty well. But that evening I happened to see on TV some show about America that ended with the playing of the National Anthem, and I found myself suddenly turning it off. The anthem never engenders a good feeling in me.

But why? Am I not a patriot? Why, then, does the National Anthem turn me off so that that evening I turned it off? And so I ask myself this morning.

It isn't, I'm sure, because the music of the anthem is offensive to me, even though I think we could have done better than an old British drinking song, which nobody with a …