FREEDOM

Picture some men hunkered down behind a protective sea wall on Baltimore harbor.  They've been trapped there all night while a fierce battle rages on.  They're observing, at an unsafe distance, the British attacking during the War of 1812.  To their right, three British Man-of-War are firing their huge cannons at a small citadel the Americans called Fort McHenry built at the harbor's edge and are dodging the return fire.  A large American flag atop a parapet of that fort boldly waves in the face of this onslaught.  As long as that flag flies, there is no concession by the Americans, no quit, no surrender.  As the first light of day is soon to appear, one lad says to the others:

O! say, can you see, by the dawns 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?

YES!

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