Believing in “No More Kings”
In September 1975, as America was celebrating its Bicentennial, ABC launched a new season of Schoolhouse Rock interstitials titled “America Rock.”
The first of those ten cartoons was “No More Kings,” featuring a song by Lynn Ahrens that moved rapidly from the Pilgrims at Plymouth to American independence.
The last cartoon in that series, also with a Lynn Ahrens song, was “Three-Ring Government,” about the division between legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
Seeking to avoid criticism, the producers had avoided current controversies and also tamed the controversies of the past. They reflected a version of national history that the overwhelming majority of Americans in that era could agree on.
Such as “No More Kings” and “Three-Ring Government.”
1 comment:
"No More Kings" is the kind of thing that students in our country learn in the fifth grade. Or at least they used to.
If you came as an immigrant, it was something you had to know to pass the citizenship test.
It is, indeed, the basic foundation of the United States of America.
More than anything else, it is what has made America great for the past quarter-millennium.
We are just 57 days from the 250th anniversary of the day when thousands of "embattled farmers" marched to fight against British Regulars. Interviewed years later, one of them said he had gone because "we always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to."
The Americans of 1775 knew all about corruption from experience; they knew the old truism that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That's why they wanted something different. And that's why, soon afterwards, they drafted a Constitution filled with checks and balances.
I cannot understand why any American leader would pretend to act like a king, even jokingly -- or why so many American citizens today are fawning over those would-be monarchs. It is an insult to the sacred memory of those who fought, and died, on that April 19.
Maybe it's time to have a rerun of that cartoon series.
Thank you, John, for this timely post.
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