On Freedom

by Timothy Snyder

Considering the Leib of others (as Stein put it), or seeing the strangers among us (as Weil said), we attune ourselves differently. Thinking about that physical act of standing at attention from other perspectives, we hear the anthem’s lyrics differently. The questions it poses become less rhetorical: Does the American flag wave today? Most assuredly it does. This is the easy part. But does it fly over “the land of the free”? It is easy to imagine that freedom will be brought to us by a song, by jets over a stadium, by the land, by the ancestors, by the Founders, by capitalism. But is the notion that we are granted freedom right for a “home of the brave”? Is it not more courageous to ask what Americans have done, could have done, should do? We say that a symbol stands for something, but all too often a symbol merely stands in for something. The American flag is supposed to stand for freedom, but it can very easily stand in for freedom. In singing the anthem, we treat its values as permanent, or as if they were enacted by song. But praise is not practice.