There's been a great deal said about the national anthem being sung in Spanish and most of it has been pretty silly. Xenophobia is sweeping the land, and I am not sure why. Consider how for years now, people have been fretting about who is going to pay the Social Security of the baby boomers when they retire en masse in a few years. We now have the answer, it will be the Mexicans who are moving north to take advantage of the jobs that no one else seems to want. To my way of thinking this is a good thing.

The first generation of any immigrants have a little trouble with the language and the culture. Their children do not however. And the third generation is indistinguishable from the rest of the population. It happened with the Irish, the Polish, the Hungarians, and it will also happen with the Mexicans. The upshot is that our culture will be a little richer, our food choices will be a little broader, and our language will have a richer vocabulary. I do not see a downside here.

Finally, most people associate singing the national anthem with the phrase, "Play ball!" If you look at the rosters of the major league teams, singing the national anthem in Spanish makes a great deal of sense. America has always been a mixing bowl of cultures. It will always be if we are lucky. I really worry that a society not being challenged by new ideas and new ways of looking at things is, at best, stale, at worst, dying.

Finally, we are not the only nation seeing population shifts. They're probably singing "Oh Canada" in Toronto in Hindi. I'm sure that the French are hearing "La Marseilles" being sung in Algerian, and the Germans are hearing their national anthem being sung in Turkish.