Full marks to Timothy Garton Ash for identifying four of the great national anthems:
La MarseillaiseBut what can he be thinking of, with this suggestion?
If the world is to have the anthem it deserves, we need a big fat common enemy. I'm afraid inanimate challenges like climate change, Aids or meteors won't do the trick. What we need is some really nasty aggressor to be repulsed. When the Martians invade, the world will get its Marseillaise.So we'll have a rousing international anthem at the small cost of being invaded by extraterrestrials! And what if we should lose? And be enslaved? Almost as bad, we'll have to put up with an endless series of articles in the Guardian, and posts on Comment is Free, telling us that it's all our own fault.
I predict the lines of some of those pieces:
1. We shouldn't have gone and drawn attention to ourselves with all that space exploration.
2. Look how badly we've been treating other species; we deserve to be enslaved.
3. It's a punishment from God for our sinful ways.
4. US and/or Israeli intelligence are responsible for creating the problem. They were, earlier, in league with these extraterrestrials, thinking they could manipulate them to their own evil neocon purposes.
5. George W. Bush is one of them.
Further suggestions are invited as to why, under attack from out there, we'll only have ourselves to blame.
[See the follow-up post here.]
