July 4, 2025 • 20 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The late Great Russian and Ball loved America so much
that he couldn't stop talking about it. Rush loved to
see people succeed in life, and he knew that America
provided that opportunity more than anyone else in the face
of the world throughout history. Rush took his love for
our country and created a new radio format, and that's
what I'm in today, a format talking about America. America
(00:25):
was Russia's passion, and you heard it every time he
turned on that golden EP microphone. Rush firmly believed in
American exceptionalism, and you could hear that passion in everything
he said.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Here's an exam what American exceptionalism is not. It is
not that we are better people. It is not that
we are superior people. It is not that we are
smarter people. It is not that God loves us and
hates everybody else. It is not that God prefers us.
(01:04):
It is not that God doesn't prefer anybody else. American
exceptionalism has nothing to do with anything but freedom and liberty.
Here is what American exceptionalism is. By the way, this
(01:24):
is one of the fundamental reasons why I got so
excited when presented with the idea of writing a book
about the truth of American history in stages and various
elements for young people. My book Rush Revere in the
Brave Pilgrims is all about the exceptionalism of those people.
(01:49):
So what is it, Well, if you know the history
of the world, read your Bible, read whatever historical account
of humanity you hold the dear, and what you'll read
arout is human tyranny. You'll read of bondage, you'll read
of slavery. The vast majority of the people, the vast
(02:14):
majority of the human beings who have lived and breathed
and walked this planet, have lived under the tyranny of despots.
The vast majority. It isn't even close. The vast majority
of the people of this world since the beginning of
(02:35):
time have never known the kind of liberty and freedom
that's taken for granted every day in this country. Most
people have lived in abject fear of their leaders. Most
people have lived in abject fear of whoever held power
(02:59):
over them. Most people in the world have not had
plentiful axus access to food and clean water. It was
a major daily undertaking for most people to come up
with just those two basic things. Just surviving was the
(03:21):
primary occupation of most people in the world. The history
of the world is dictatorship, tyranny, whatever you want to
call it, subjugation of populations. And then along came the
(03:41):
United States of America. Pilgrims were the first to come
here seeking freedom from all of that. They were oppressed
because of their religion. They were told they had to
believe in the King and his God, whatever it was,
(04:02):
or they would be imprisoned. They led an exodus from
Europe to this country of people of the same.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Mindset.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
They simply wanted to escape the tyranny of their ordinary lives.
This country was founded for the first time in human history,
a government and country was founded on the belief that
leaders serve the population. This country the first in history.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
And this is the exception ex cept except the exception
to the rule is what American exceptionalism is. And because
of this liberty and freedom that our country exists, because
the founders recognized it comes from God.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
It's part of the the natural yearning of the human spirit.
It is not granted by a government. It's not granted
by Putin, It's not granted by Obama or any other
human being. We are created with the natural yearning to
be free, and it is other men and leaders throughout
human history who have suppressed that and imprisoned people for
seeking it. The US is the first time in the
(05:21):
history of the world where a government was organized with
a constitution laying out the rules that the individual was
supreme dominant, and that is what led to the US
becoming the greatest country ever because it unleashed people to
be the best they could be, unlike it had ever happened.
That's American exceptionalism. With his finger on the pulse, the
(05:45):
King of Team continues on The Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
You cannot have a show about the love of America
without including Mona Reagan. Reagan gave many great speeches in
his eight years as president, and I'd be just as
happy played and every single one of you. But we
chose this address to the nation July fourth, nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
By fellow Americans.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
In a few moments, the celebrations will begin here in
New York Harbor.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
If you're going to be quiet a show.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
I was just looking over the preparations and thinking about it,
saying that we had beckon Hollywood about never doing a
scene with kids or animals, but they'd steal the scene
every time.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
So you can rest assured. I wouldn't even think about
trying to compete.
Speaker 5 (06:29):
For the Firewars display, especially on the fourth of July.
My remarks tonight will be brief, but it's worth remembering
that all the celebration of this day is rooted in history.
It's recorded that shortly after the Declaration of Independence were
signed in Philadelphia, celebrations took place throughout the land, and
many of the former colonists, they were just starting to
(06:51):
call them sell to Americans, set off cannons and marched in.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Fife and drum parades.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
What a contrast with the sober scene that is taken
place a short time earlier in Independence Hall, fifty six
men came forward to.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Sign the partment. It was noted at the time.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
That they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
And that was more than rhetoric.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Each of those men knew the penalty for high treaty
for the crown. We must all hang together, Benjamin Franklin said,
or assuredly, we will all hang separately. And John Hancock,
it is said, wrote his signature in a large script
so King George could see it without his facts.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
They were brave.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
They stayed bray through all the bloodshed of the coming years.
Their courage created a nation built on a universal claim
to human dignity, on the proposition that every man.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Woman and child had a right to a future of freedom.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
For just a moment, let us listen to the words again.
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all
men are created evil if they are endowed by their
creative with certain unalienable rights, that among these our life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. Last night, when we rededicated
(08:09):
Miss Liberty and relive her torch, we reflected on all
the millions who came here in search of the dream
of freedom inaugurated in an independence hall. We reflected too,
on their courage and becoming great distances and settling in
a foreign land, and men passing on to their children
and their children's children. The hope symbolized in this statue
(08:30):
here just behind us, the hope that is America. It
is a hope that someday every people in every nation
of the world will know the blessings of the liberty.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
And it's the hope of millions all around the world.
In the last few years.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
I've spoken in Westminster to the mother of Parliaments, at Versailles,
where French kings and world leaders have made war and peace.
I bit of the Vatican in Rome, the Imperial Palace
in Japan, in the ancient city of Beijing. I've seen
the beaches of Normandy and stood again with those boys
at Guanta Hope long ago sailed the heights, and with
(09:08):
at that time Lisa Zanetta Hen who was at Omaha
Beach for the father she loved, the father who had
once dreamed of seeing again the place where he and
so many brave brothers had landed on d Day, And
he had died before he could make that trick, and
she made it for him and Dad.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
She said, I'll always be proud.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
And I've seen the successors to these brave men, the
young Americans in uniform all over the world, young Americans
like you here tonight, the man the mighty Uss Kennedy,
and the Iowa and the other ships of the line.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
I can assure you you out there who.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
Were listening to these these young people are like their
fathers and their grandfathers, just as with a just as brave,
and we can be just as proud. But our prayer
tonight is that the call or their courage will never come,
and that it's important for us too to be brave.
Not so much the bravery of the battle view, I
(10:09):
mean the bravery of brotherhood. All through our history, our
presidents and leaders have spoken of the national unity and
warned us that the real obstacle to moving forward the
boundaries of freedom.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
The only permanent danger of the.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Hope that is America comes from within. It's easy enough
to dismiss, they said, a kind of familiar exhortation.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yet the truth is that even too of our greatest
founding fathers.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
John Adams and Towns Jefferson, once learned there's less late
in life. They worked so closely together in Philadelphia for independence,
but once that was game and a government was formed,
something called partisan politics began to get in the way.
After a bitter and devisive campaign, Jefferson defeated Adams for
(10:55):
the presidency in eighteen hundred and the night before Jefferson's inauguration,
Adams slipped away to Boston, disappointed, broken hearted, and bitter.
For years there estrangement lasted, But then when both had retired,
Jefferson at sixty eight to Monticello and Adams at seventy
six to Quincy. They began, through their letters to seek
(11:18):
again to each other, letters that discussed almost every conceivable subject, gardening,
horseback riding, even sneezing as a cure for higgos, but
other subjects as well, the loss of loved with us,
the mystery of grief and sorrow, the importance of religion,
and of course the last thaught us the final hopes.
(11:39):
Two old men, two great patriarchs, for the country that
they had helped to found and loved sovietly.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
It carries me back.
Speaker 5 (11:49):
Jefferson wrote about correspondence with his co signer of the
Declaration of Independence, to the times when beset with difficulties
and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause,
struggling for what is most valuable to man, has right
to self cover, laboring always at the same or with
some wave. Ever they had threatened to overwhelmess, and yet
(12:11):
passing armless, we.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Rode through the storm to the heart.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
On the hand, it was their last gift to us,
this lesson in brotherhood, the intolerance for each other. It's
the inside of the America's shrimp as an issue, and
when both died on the same day, within hours of
each other. That date was July fourth, fifty years exactly
(12:35):
at the first gift to us, the Declaration.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Of the Independence.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
And fellow Americans, it falls to us to keep faith
with them, and all the great Americans are past. Believe me,
if there's one impression I carry with me after the
privilege of holding for five and a half years the
office held by Adams Jefferson Thincoln, it is this that
the things that unite us, America's past of which we're
(13:02):
so proud, our hopes and aspirations for the future of
the world, and it is much love of country, these
things far out.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Away, what little divides a right.
Speaker 5 (13:14):
So tonight we are for reaffirm that jew and gentile,
we are one nation under God, black and white, we
are one nation any divisible, that Republican and Democrat, we
are all Americans tonight, with heart and hand, through whatever
trial and the travail, we pledge ourselves to each other
(13:37):
and at the cause of a human freedom, the cause
that is given a light to this land and hope
to the whole world.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
I thought of Americans. We're known around the world as
a confident and a happy people.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Tonight, there's much to celebrate and many blessings to be
grateful for. So the lot was good to talk about
serious things is just as important.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And just as American people need to.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Make informed decisions.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
And you're giving him the into, Michael Berry because you're
a public Paul Revere kind of ringing the warning.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
It is July fourth.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
We're reminded that Johnny Cash wrote a song about patriotism
as the Vietnam War was coming to an end. Johnny
wrote this song about the Stars and Stripes in the
midst of Watergate. Johnny Cash wrote that Ragged Old Flag
at a time when patriotism was at an all time low.
We've played this song for you a lot on this program.
(14:37):
It's one of our favorites. Ramono loaves that I love it.
Our whole team loves it. What I'd like to play
today is something a little different. It's an excerpt of
Johnny Cash from the Ralph Emery Show. Ralph Emory asked
Johnny about his thoughts on the freedom to burn the flag,
and Johnny Cash did not parse words on the subject,
(14:57):
and then he recited that Ragged old flag. Something beautiful
about Johnny Cash, his cadence in his baritone voice reciting
it without what you're used to is the musical accompaniment,
just the words Chile.
Speaker 7 (15:15):
How do you feel about burning the flag? You feel
like we should have a law against burning the flag?
And I remember if you will.
Speaker 6 (15:34):
Yeah, yeah, I do. When I see somebody hear about
burning the flag, I think about the time that June
and I went to Vietnam in nineteen sixty nine and
saw the burning flesh the boys coming in from the
(15:55):
helicopters on the stretchers with the flesh burn falling off
from the napalm on them, on their bodies, and you
never forget the smell of that. But anyway, back to
the flag, I think I think of that whether we
were you know, whether the Vietnam War was right or not,
(16:17):
there are a lot of people sacrifice their lives for
it and their time and their brains, and whether or
not we were right in being there when we went
to t that wasn't the issue. It's that Americans were
there dying for me and uh and dying for that flag.
(16:39):
So I crazy, you know, I think if you want
to burn the American flag, you ought to take it
to Iran. But I still cherish those freedoms, you know,
like I can play I gay. If I got a
week off next week, I can go and do anything
I want to in this United States. Uh, And there's
(16:59):
not many countries you can do that in. And I
cherish you all of the freedoms that we got, including
the freedom the right to burn the flag, but also
got the right to bear arms. And if you burn line,
I'll shoot you.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Chin.
Speaker 7 (17:16):
You wrote a song once, and I think you may
have written it while you were in the Air Force,
called Ragged Old Flag.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
No.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
I wrote that in nineteen seventy five. Did you in Binghamton,
New York? I saw you do it.
Speaker 7 (17:31):
On the fourth of July several years ago at Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina. Could you do it for us right now.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
Ragged old Flag. I walked through a county courthouse square
and on a park bench, you old man was sitting there.
I said, your old courthouse is kind of run down.
He said, oh, that'll do for our little town. I said,
(18:01):
your old flagpoles kind of leaned a little bit, and
I said, ragged old flag you got hanging on it?
He said, have a seat, and I said, down, says,
first time you've come to our little town. I said,
I think it is. He said, I don't like the brag,
but we're kind of proud.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Of that ragged old flag.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
You see. We got a little hole in that flag
there when Washington took it across the Delaware and it
got powder burned. The Knight Francis Scott Key set up
watching it right and say, can you see got a
little rip in New Orleans with Packingham and Jackson tugging
at it seems it almost fell at the Alamo beside
(18:47):
the Texas flag, but she waved on, though it got
cut with the sword. That Chancellor's fell got cut again.
At Shiloh Hill there was Robert D. Lee bore a
guard and brag, and the south wind blew hard on
that ragged old flag. On Flanders Field. In World War
(19:09):
One she took a bad hit from Aberthica. She turned
blood red. In World War Two she hung limp and low.
Of the time that one was through. She was in Korea, Vietnam.
She went where she was sent by Uncle Sam. The
(19:29):
Native American Indians, the Blacks, the Yellow, the white.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
All she had red.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
Blood for the stars and strifes, and in her own
good land. Here she's been abused, she's been burned, dishonored, denied, refused,
and the very government for which she stands is scandalized
throughout the land. And she's getting threadbare, she's wearing kind
of thin. But she's in good sheep for the sheep
(19:58):
she's in because she's been through the fire before, and
she can take a whole lot more. So we raise
her up every morning, and we bring her down slowly
every night. We don't let her touch the ground.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
And we fold her upright.
Speaker 6 (20:14):
On second thought, I guess I do like the drag,
because I'm mighty proud of that ragged old flag.
The late Great Russian and Ball loved America so much
that he couldn't stop talking about it. Rush loved to
see people succeed in life, and he knew that America
provided that opportunity more than anyone else in the face
of the world throughout history. Rush took his love for
our country and created a new radio format, and that's
what I'm in today, a format talking about America. America
(00:25):
was Russia's passion, and you heard it every time he
turned on that golden EP microphone. Rush firmly believed in
American exceptionalism, and you could hear that passion in everything
he said.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Here's an exam what American exceptionalism is not. It is
not that we are better people. It is not that
we are superior people. It is not that we are
smarter people. It is not that God loves us and
hates everybody else. It is not that God prefers us.
(01:04):
It is not that God doesn't prefer anybody else. American
exceptionalism has nothing to do with anything but freedom and liberty.
Here is what American exceptionalism is. By the way, this
(01:24):
is one of the fundamental reasons why I got so
excited when presented with the idea of writing a book
about the truth of American history in stages and various
elements for young people. My book Rush Revere in the
Brave Pilgrims is all about the exceptionalism of those people.
(01:49):
So what is it, Well, if you know the history
of the world, read your Bible, read whatever historical account
of humanity you hold the dear, and what you'll read
arout is human tyranny. You'll read of bondage, you'll read
of slavery. The vast majority of the people, the vast
(02:14):
majority of the human beings who have lived and breathed
and walked this planet, have lived under the tyranny of despots.
The vast majority. It isn't even close. The vast majority
of the people of this world since the beginning of
(02:35):
time have never known the kind of liberty and freedom
that's taken for granted every day in this country. Most
people have lived in abject fear of their leaders. Most
people have lived in abject fear of whoever held power
(02:59):
over them. Most people in the world have not had
plentiful axus access to food and clean water. It was
a major daily undertaking for most people to come up
with just those two basic things. Just surviving was the
(03:21):
primary occupation of most people in the world. The history
of the world is dictatorship, tyranny, whatever you want to
call it, subjugation of populations. And then along came the
(03:41):
United States of America. Pilgrims were the first to come
here seeking freedom from all of that. They were oppressed
because of their religion. They were told they had to
believe in the King and his God, whatever it was,
(04:02):
or they would be imprisoned. They led an exodus from
Europe to this country of people of the same.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Mindset.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
They simply wanted to escape the tyranny of their ordinary lives.
This country was founded for the first time in human history,
a government and country was founded on the belief that
leaders serve the population. This country the first in history.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
And this is the exception ex cept except the exception
to the rule is what American exceptionalism is. And because
of this liberty and freedom that our country exists, because
the founders recognized it comes from God.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
It's part of the the natural yearning of the human spirit.
It is not granted by a government. It's not granted
by Putin, It's not granted by Obama or any other
human being. We are created with the natural yearning to
be free, and it is other men and leaders throughout
human history who have suppressed that and imprisoned people for
seeking it. The US is the first time in the
(05:21):
history of the world where a government was organized with
a constitution laying out the rules that the individual was
supreme dominant, and that is what led to the US
becoming the greatest country ever because it unleashed people to
be the best they could be, unlike it had ever happened.
That's American exceptionalism. With his finger on the pulse, the
(05:45):
King of Team continues on The Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
You cannot have a show about the love of America
without including Mona Reagan. Reagan gave many great speeches in
his eight years as president, and I'd be just as
happy played and every single one of you. But we
chose this address to the nation July fourth, nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
By fellow Americans.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
In a few moments, the celebrations will begin here in
New York Harbor.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
If you're going to be quiet a show.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
I was just looking over the preparations and thinking about it,
saying that we had beckon Hollywood about never doing a
scene with kids or animals, but they'd steal the scene
every time.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
So you can rest assured. I wouldn't even think about
trying to compete.
Speaker 5 (06:29):
For the Firewars display, especially on the fourth of July.
My remarks tonight will be brief, but it's worth remembering
that all the celebration of this day is rooted in history.
It's recorded that shortly after the Declaration of Independence were
signed in Philadelphia, celebrations took place throughout the land, and
many of the former colonists, they were just starting to
(06:51):
call them sell to Americans, set off cannons and marched in.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Fife and drum parades.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
What a contrast with the sober scene that is taken
place a short time earlier in Independence Hall, fifty six
men came forward to.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Sign the partment. It was noted at the time.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
That they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
And that was more than rhetoric.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Each of those men knew the penalty for high treaty
for the crown. We must all hang together, Benjamin Franklin said,
or assuredly, we will all hang separately. And John Hancock,
it is said, wrote his signature in a large script
so King George could see it without his facts.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
They were brave.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
They stayed bray through all the bloodshed of the coming years.
Their courage created a nation built on a universal claim
to human dignity, on the proposition that every man.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Woman and child had a right to a future of freedom.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
For just a moment, let us listen to the words again.
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all
men are created evil if they are endowed by their
creative with certain unalienable rights, that among these our life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. Last night, when we rededicated
(08:09):
Miss Liberty and relive her torch, we reflected on all
the millions who came here in search of the dream
of freedom inaugurated in an independence hall. We reflected too,
on their courage and becoming great distances and settling in
a foreign land, and men passing on to their children
and their children's children. The hope symbolized in this statue
(08:30):
here just behind us, the hope that is America. It
is a hope that someday every people in every nation
of the world will know the blessings of the liberty.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
And it's the hope of millions all around the world.
In the last few years.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
I've spoken in Westminster to the mother of Parliaments, at Versailles,
where French kings and world leaders have made war and peace.
I bit of the Vatican in Rome, the Imperial Palace
in Japan, in the ancient city of Beijing. I've seen
the beaches of Normandy and stood again with those boys
at Guanta Hope long ago sailed the heights, and with
(09:08):
at that time Lisa Zanetta Hen who was at Omaha
Beach for the father she loved, the father who had
once dreamed of seeing again the place where he and
so many brave brothers had landed on d Day, And
he had died before he could make that trick, and
she made it for him and Dad.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
She said, I'll always be proud.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
And I've seen the successors to these brave men, the
young Americans in uniform all over the world, young Americans
like you here tonight, the man the mighty Uss Kennedy,
and the Iowa and the other ships of the line.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
I can assure you you out there who.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
Were listening to these these young people are like their
fathers and their grandfathers, just as with a just as brave,
and we can be just as proud. But our prayer
tonight is that the call or their courage will never come,
and that it's important for us too to be brave.
Not so much the bravery of the battle view, I
(10:09):
mean the bravery of brotherhood. All through our history, our
presidents and leaders have spoken of the national unity and
warned us that the real obstacle to moving forward the
boundaries of freedom.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
The only permanent danger of the.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Hope that is America comes from within. It's easy enough
to dismiss, they said, a kind of familiar exhortation.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yet the truth is that even too of our greatest
founding fathers.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
John Adams and Towns Jefferson, once learned there's less late
in life. They worked so closely together in Philadelphia for independence,
but once that was game and a government was formed,
something called partisan politics began to get in the way.
After a bitter and devisive campaign, Jefferson defeated Adams for
(10:55):
the presidency in eighteen hundred and the night before Jefferson's inauguration,
Adams slipped away to Boston, disappointed, broken hearted, and bitter.
For years there estrangement lasted, But then when both had retired,
Jefferson at sixty eight to Monticello and Adams at seventy
six to Quincy. They began, through their letters to seek
(11:18):
again to each other, letters that discussed almost every conceivable subject, gardening,
horseback riding, even sneezing as a cure for higgos, but
other subjects as well, the loss of loved with us,
the mystery of grief and sorrow, the importance of religion,
and of course the last thaught us the final hopes.
(11:39):
Two old men, two great patriarchs, for the country that
they had helped to found and loved sovietly.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
It carries me back.
Speaker 5 (11:49):
Jefferson wrote about correspondence with his co signer of the
Declaration of Independence, to the times when beset with difficulties
and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause,
struggling for what is most valuable to man, has right
to self cover, laboring always at the same or with
some wave. Ever they had threatened to overwhelmess, and yet
(12:11):
passing armless, we.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Rode through the storm to the heart.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
On the hand, it was their last gift to us,
this lesson in brotherhood, the intolerance for each other. It's
the inside of the America's shrimp as an issue, and
when both died on the same day, within hours of
each other. That date was July fourth, fifty years exactly
(12:35):
at the first gift to us, the Declaration.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Of the Independence.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
And fellow Americans, it falls to us to keep faith
with them, and all the great Americans are past. Believe me,
if there's one impression I carry with me after the
privilege of holding for five and a half years the
office held by Adams Jefferson Thincoln, it is this that
the things that unite us, America's past of which we're
(13:02):
so proud, our hopes and aspirations for the future of
the world, and it is much love of country, these
things far out.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Away, what little divides a right.
Speaker 5 (13:14):
So tonight we are for reaffirm that jew and gentile,
we are one nation under God, black and white, we
are one nation any divisible, that Republican and Democrat, we
are all Americans tonight, with heart and hand, through whatever
trial and the travail, we pledge ourselves to each other
(13:37):
and at the cause of a human freedom, the cause
that is given a light to this land and hope
to the whole world.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
I thought of Americans. We're known around the world as
a confident and a happy people.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Tonight, there's much to celebrate and many blessings to be
grateful for. So the lot was good to talk about
serious things is just as important.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And just as American people need to.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Make informed decisions.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
And you're giving him the into, Michael Berry because you're
a public Paul Revere kind of ringing the warning.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
It is July fourth.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
We're reminded that Johnny Cash wrote a song about patriotism
as the Vietnam War was coming to an end. Johnny
wrote this song about the Stars and Stripes in the
midst of Watergate. Johnny Cash wrote that Ragged Old Flag
at a time when patriotism was at an all time low.
We've played this song for you a lot on this program.
(14:37):
It's one of our favorites. Ramono loaves that I love it.
Our whole team loves it. What I'd like to play
today is something a little different. It's an excerpt of
Johnny Cash from the Ralph Emery Show. Ralph Emory asked
Johnny about his thoughts on the freedom to burn the flag,
and Johnny Cash did not parse words on the subject,
(14:57):
and then he recited that Ragged old flag. Something beautiful
about Johnny Cash, his cadence in his baritone voice reciting
it without what you're used to is the musical accompaniment,
just the words Chile.
Speaker 7 (15:15):
How do you feel about burning the flag? You feel
like we should have a law against burning the flag?
And I remember if you will.
Speaker 6 (15:34):
Yeah, yeah, I do. When I see somebody hear about
burning the flag, I think about the time that June
and I went to Vietnam in nineteen sixty nine and
saw the burning flesh the boys coming in from the
(15:55):
helicopters on the stretchers with the flesh burn falling off
from the napalm on them, on their bodies, and you
never forget the smell of that. But anyway, back to
the flag, I think I think of that whether we
were you know, whether the Vietnam War was right or not,
(16:17):
there are a lot of people sacrifice their lives for
it and their time and their brains, and whether or
not we were right in being there when we went
to t that wasn't the issue. It's that Americans were
there dying for me and uh and dying for that flag.
(16:39):
So I crazy, you know, I think if you want
to burn the American flag, you ought to take it
to Iran. But I still cherish those freedoms, you know,
like I can play I gay. If I got a
week off next week, I can go and do anything
I want to in this United States. Uh, And there's
(16:59):
not many countries you can do that in. And I
cherish you all of the freedoms that we got, including
the freedom the right to burn the flag, but also
got the right to bear arms. And if you burn line,
I'll shoot you.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Chin.
Speaker 7 (17:16):
You wrote a song once, and I think you may
have written it while you were in the Air Force,
called Ragged Old Flag.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
No.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
I wrote that in nineteen seventy five. Did you in Binghamton,
New York? I saw you do it.
Speaker 7 (17:31):
On the fourth of July several years ago at Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina. Could you do it for us right now.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
Ragged old Flag. I walked through a county courthouse square
and on a park bench, you old man was sitting there.
I said, your old courthouse is kind of run down.
He said, oh, that'll do for our little town. I said,
(18:01):
your old flagpoles kind of leaned a little bit, and
I said, ragged old flag you got hanging on it?
He said, have a seat, and I said, down, says,
first time you've come to our little town. I said,
I think it is. He said, I don't like the brag,
but we're kind of proud.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Of that ragged old flag.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
You see. We got a little hole in that flag
there when Washington took it across the Delaware and it
got powder burned. The Knight Francis Scott Key set up
watching it right and say, can you see got a
little rip in New Orleans with Packingham and Jackson tugging
at it seems it almost fell at the Alamo beside
(18:47):
the Texas flag, but she waved on, though it got
cut with the sword. That Chancellor's fell got cut again.
At Shiloh Hill there was Robert D. Lee bore a
guard and brag, and the south wind blew hard on
that ragged old flag. On Flanders Field. In World War
(19:09):
One she took a bad hit from Aberthica. She turned
blood red. In World War Two she hung limp and low.
Of the time that one was through. She was in Korea, Vietnam.
She went where she was sent by Uncle Sam. The
(19:29):
Native American Indians, the Blacks, the Yellow, the white.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
All she had red.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
Blood for the stars and strifes, and in her own
good land. Here she's been abused, she's been burned, dishonored, denied, refused,
and the very government for which she stands is scandalized
throughout the land. And she's getting threadbare, she's wearing kind
of thin. But she's in good sheep for the sheep
(19:58):
she's in because she's been through the fire before, and
she can take a whole lot more. So we raise
her up every morning, and we bring her down slowly
every night. We don't let her touch the ground.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
And we fold her upright.
Speaker 6 (20:14):
On second thought, I guess I do like the drag,
because I'm mighty proud of that ragged old flag.
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