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My favorite national anthem is the Marseillaise, which, besides a great tune, has the wonderful line, "Their polluted blood shall water the furrows of our fields!" So civilized, those French.
Oddly, the German national anthem, "Deutschland Uber Alles," is one of the least bellicose. Read the lyrics sometime. It's literally about wine, women and song.
I'm ready to go out and fight for the French (and I have no French ancestors - that I'm aware of) every time I see the "Marseillaise" scene in "Casablanca."
Since I grumble enough about my Dad on this site, I'll give him a kudos on this one. We didn't wave flags, etc., but alway rose and were silent at the playing of the National Anthem as a way of saying, yes, I love my country, not blindly, but still I love it. Sure, and my Dad acknowledge it, it was silly that it was played before most games, but as he said, so what, a lot of silly cultural stuff happens, stand, be respectful and move on. And if someone doesn't stand, "ignore it, it's their business, not yours."
And that was it. We didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it, didn't discuss whether the song was good or not or each word in it or if there was a better way to handle it - it was, we stood, it finished, we sat and, then, watched the game.
Every country, every family, every culture, every religion, every group develops some, somewhat odd, somewhat inconsistent norms and rituals. In this country, the current norm is to be incredibly respectful and sensitive to any non-American cultural norm, any non-dominant-white-power group norm and, in almost every case, I agree with that view, but that same view should be applied to America's norms.
Our National Anthem and playing it before games is a quirk / silly / inconsistent / whatever - I respect it the same way I would respect the British playing God Save the Queen or a small tribe somewhere doing a dance I don't understand that pays respects to some important idea in its culture.