It’s Ring, you Moron

I hate to be pedantic, but this “let freedom reign” thing bugs the hell out of me.

The common phrase is “let freedom ring” not “let freedom reign.”

A Google search turns up 2,090 references to “let freedom reign” one of the top links coming from a white supremacy web site called “Panzerfaust Records” that features a bunch of racist lyrics. “My Country Tis of Thee” is not amongst them, as you might imagine.

On the other hand, “let freedom ring” turns up 72,700 references, number one being Sean Hannity’s dull as dishwater anti-liberal screed. (You’d think he’d be pissed that he lost the opportunity for such a nice cross-promotion.)

Of course, aside from the song lyric that every American schoolchild learns when he or she is about six years old, (“….from eh-everee-eey mountainside… le-et freedom ring,”) we have one of the most moving speeches ever made by anyone, anywhere, which is Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech:

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Now that would have been worth evoking in the moment that Iraq was allegedly given back its sovereignty. Instead, our illiterate president, or an illiterate member of his staff, evoked a phrase that sort of sounds like that one, but isn’t. Just like everything else with this godforsaken war, they screwed it up — even down to the note Junior wrote for posterity.