This Land Is Your Land

Last night I heard Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, and John McCutcheon performing This Land is Your Land, along with a bunch of other people I'd never heard of before. It was quite an experience. They sang all the verses, especially the socialist ones; Pete Seeger sang the one about "but on the other side it didn't say nothing." Anyway, all of this got me thinking about the idea that this song ought to become our national anthem. I'd certainly prefer it to the current occupant of that position, but it strikes me that it's really more a substitute for God Bless America. Obviously the socialist verses are never going to become anything official, but the first verse and chorus are rather comparable to God Bless America:

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream Waters
This land was made for you and me.

 Alternately, we have:

God bless America, land that I love
Stand beside her, and guide her
Through the night with a light from above.

From the mountains to the prairies
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America, my home sweet home.

Both songs contain one part celebration of the wondrous character of America and one part ideology. But in the one case we have a particular religious ideology, the prayer to a certain theistic kind of god to intervene on America's behalf (almost implying that America can't do great things, or the kind of great thing it's already done, on its own). In the other case we have simply the ideology of democracy: this land, this country, this nation belongs to all of us. One of these is the fundamental ideology of our nation; the other is explicitly prohibited as an official ideology of our nation. Which sounds more appropriate for a quasi-official national song?

I would also claim that Woody Guthrie's lyrics do a better job of celebrating America than Irving Berlin's. The imagery in God Bless America is pedestrian at best; the only actual image, about America and not about god, is "white with foam." On the other hand we have "ribbon of highway," "endless skyway," "golden valley," as well as the invocation of four specific pieces of American greatness: California, as varied and wondrous in itself as most sovereign nations; the New York Island, home to the greatest city in the world; the Redwood forest, one of the natural wonders of the world; and the Gulf Stream waters, which move throughout one of the world's two great oceans and keep vast swaths of land habitable. That just trumps "mountains," "prairies," and "oceans."

None of this is to suggest that I wouldn't like to get rid of The Star-Spangled Banner as well, but it seems like This Land Is Your Land is just a more appropriate foil for the other of our national anthems. I discover, from Wikipedia, that it was in fact originally meant to be just that, an answer to Berlin's song. Of course since a whole lot of people in this country don't really mean it about not establishing religions, we're not going to sing This Land Is Your Land at baseball games any time soon, but it would be nice if we did.