In the year 1814 America was just thirty six years old and once again at war with the British.

Also in 1814, on the night of September 13, a young lawyer from Maryland named Francis Scott Key—who at thirty three was only three years younger than his country—was in Baltimore as a diplomatic guest on board a British warship where he was working to negotiate a prisoner exchange.

September 13 was also the night his British hosts launched an attack against Baltimore, and Francis Scott Key found himself in the extremely uncomfortable position of watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry from the deck of an enemy ship. When morning came, Key looked out to see the American flag still flying over Fort McHenry. The attack had failed, and Key—who also dabbled from time to time as an amateur poet—found himself feeling the need to express his great relief. So in the days that followed he took pen in hand and wrote these now, eh, fairly famous words:

Say, can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, o'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night
that our flag was still there.

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

When you sing our national anthem it sounds bold and declarative, but I’ve come to love it for another reason altogether. I’ve come to love it because it is in fact not making a declaration. It is asking a question, just one question:

After such a pounding, do we still have a country?

It is a question we must ask again and again and again. After every attack from abroad or within. After every election decided, every law passed. Every time we have to face one of our many imperfections and failings. It is a question we need to ask because of our imperfections and failings. Because we are imperfect. Because democracy is imperfect. Because our country that we love is imperfect.

It took a civil war to free millions of Americans from America. That freedom is even now still grossly imperfect. Francis Scott Key was a slave owner. American women couldn’t vote in their own country until 1920. And that freedom is even still grossly imperfect. The Star Spangled Banner didn’t even become our national anthem until Hitler was rising to power in 1931.

America is great. America is beautiful. America is imperfect. And because of our imperfections America always needs changing. For as long as we are imperfect we will always need to readjust and reinvent and redefine and reimagine our story. And in and through it all we need to keep asking the question: Do we still have a country?

Like Francis Scott Key we often find ourselves in extremely uncomfortable positions being forced to ask extremely uncomfortable questions. But I’ll confess, I am most proud of us when we are asking the hardest questions. I’ll only lose hope in America if we stop. Questions are how we learn, how we grow, how within a beautifully imperfect country we can build ourselves a beautifully imperfect life.

And so I leave you today with still my favorite rendition of this question, sung by Whitney Houston at Super Bowl 25 in 1991. Happy Independence Day.