God bless America? If there is a God like they say and this list is any indication - I seriously doubt that.

"There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers." -Proverbs 6:16-19

Can it be legal to restrain American citizens with chains? Yankee Stadium as private property cannot discriminate against blacks or Jews or Muslims, can it?

How many national anthems do we have? Who can require blind observance of jingoistic public worship in a free country?
[expletive deleted] George Steinbrenner.

Would all dissenting citizens please report to the Ministy of Truth for reeducation.

I don't like the Yankees, but thank God for George Steinbrenner.

All you people who hate it here in the USA so much, stop whining, or move to France.

I think they are going to start this practice (preventing fans from leaving their seats) in the top of the 7th inning...when the Yanks middle relief blows another lead.

Why does Scott Proctor hate America?

Sincerely,

A Red Sox fan who is about to OD on "schaudenfraude"

Mark - you just don't get it. There are different ways to love the country.

Just because people have concern about things like this doesn't mean they don't love their country.

A decent argument can be made that it's the people who speak out against blind patriotism and abuses of power that truly love their country - they're willing to be abused by the blind folk who swallow the jingoistic lines that their leaders tell them, because they're concerned at what's being done to the country - that they love too.

I should say that I'm Australian - but we have the exact same issue here, and that's what I'm referring to.

Dear Mark,
Please consider leaving the country, if only for a while. While elsewhere you may notice that the rest of the world is on a different page than you are. I suspect one hour of watching CNN International and noticing how extremely different the coverage of the same stories are from our domestic CNN might cause you to think. Conceivably you will return ready to join the rest of us who want to get our country back from the gangsters who have stolen it.

herb

Dissent is having a difference of opinion and if you really believe that dissent is not a Right in this country then YOU should go somewhere else!

If anyone is screwing up our nation it is the people that believe they have the right to force others into a particular way of living, and now even force them to remain and listen to a certain song!

America stands for freedom and how you can believe that to mean "free to tell others what to do" just shows how confused you are. Freedoms are personal choices - not something you give to others to determine how you think. Letting someone else think for you is probably why you've gotten yourself in such a confused state. If you don't use it, you lose it, and that applies to your brain as well as it does to other areas of your body.

Ya just gotta love the United States of Arrogance.

Maybe God will bless America by removing George Steinbrenner's fat ass from between our sea to once shinning seas; maybe China would be a good fit for his totalitarian perspective.

Or failing that at least, maybe God will be kind enough to intervene again and allow Boston to win the World Series.

I have forced to stay put and listen to "God Bless America" at Yankee Stadium and I resent it completely. I'm a Yankee fan but having God and America shoved down our throats years after 9/11 is cheap and demeaning. Don't give me this America love it or leave it BS. Brownshirts standing in the isles to force you to bow to fake patriotic standards says nothing good about America. Baseball is supposed to be entertainment and not a political and or religious statement for vapid, beer-bellied, macho saps who think they are more patriotic cause they wear a lapel pin or back the status quo and it's disinformation. You people are sickening.

I miss "Take Me Out To The Ball Game". Anyone else agree?

In 1968 I, an Australian visitor to the U.S.A., was in the "RED GARTER" in Detroit when God Bless America was played. I knew that GBA was not the US national anthem so I stayed seated. For this I was roundly abused by some US servicemen at a nearby table. It took some fast talking on my part to avoid being beaten up. How things have changed.

Brian

I assume that the "love it or leave it" crowd assumes that emigration is both affordable and easily done. Ask the 2 million Iraqis who have gone elsewhere - because, thanks to our intervention - it is really dangerous to live in that country. Whenever people leave a country because of economic conditions or violence it is always those with the most resources and outside contacts. That leaves the more desperate, less educated, and more malleable citizens to oversee the mayhem. These are just the type of people GW and his gang appeal to.

Mark,
I fought in times of war in the US Navy in order to allow persons the freedom to not sing or to move around and buy a hot dog or go pee if needed. I also fought for the freedom of speech which includes burning the flag.
Do I want any one to do the above? No, and I might say something to the offender but I certainly will NOT restrict them. That's not my America.

Regards,

Paul
USN, life member VFW

And what about the poor fan who has a bathroom emergancy? Is it Mr. Steinbrenner's right as owner of this private property (which the fans have spent THEIR hard earned dollars to occupy for a few hours) to force those fans with weak bladders to endure a humiliating accident so that his sense of patriotism is accommodated? What an arrogant prig!

As George Bernard Shaw said:

"Patriotism is the conviction that this country is superior to all others, because YOU were born in it!!"

Freedom of speech is one of the myths in American society. In fact, it does exist, but only if you follow the mainstream. The moment you depart from it, you do it at your own peril. But can exactly happen if your mindset is, let's say, atypical, especially in these dangerous times? This poor soul may find out that he lives in a country in which the executive wield the power to arrest an American citizen and incarcerate him in a military installation for the rest of his life on suspicion of being a terrorist, denying him due process of law, trial by jury, and other procedural rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. He may find out that he lives in a country in which the executive wields the power to conduct warrantless searches and seizures, regardless of the provisions of the Fourth Amendment. He may find out that he lives in a country in which the executive wields the power to ignore any law passed by Congress simply by signing a statement, in his military capacity as a commander in chief, indicating an intention to ignore the law. But this is only part of the myth. A big part of it is that Americans tell themselves that they are unique in all of history, that your form of government is the greatest and best possible to mankind, toward which all others should and must strive, and that your national character is predisposed toward compassion and peace. This couldn't be, in fact, farther form the truth.
Robert Higgs, in his article "How Does the War Party Get Away With It?" states:
"No one should be surprised by the cultural proclivity for violence, of course, because Americans have always been a violent people in a violent land. Once the Europeans had committed themselves to reside on this continent, they undertook to slaughter the Indians and steal their land, and to bullwhip African slaves into submission and live off their labor—endeavors they pursued with considerable success over the next two and a half centuries. Absent other convenient victims, they have battered and killed one another on the slightest pretext, or for the simple pleasure of doing so, with guns, knives, and bare hands. If you take them to be a “peace-loving people,” you haven’t been paying attention. Such violent people are easily led to war.
While Americans have always had a thoroughly sickening love of violence and cruelty, there is one kind of horror that they have never understood: the absolute, mind-obliterating insanity of war in the modern era. The explanation for this failure is obvious: the wars of the last hundred years have always been fought "over there," never here. As long as our noble warriors were dismembering the Evil Hun or disemboweling the Yellow Jap "over there," which geographic displacement conveniently allowed us to avoid contemplation of the details smeared with entrails, our complacency continued undisturbed. But then came 9/11. We reacted as any deeply neurotic narcissist bent on world domination would, in the manner of a violent nation suffering from "superpower syndrome" as described by Robert Jay Lifton: 'You can't do this to us! You can't attack us here! We kill you bastards there, and we love it, but you can't come here!'" Let me finish by quoting Fussell in his book Wartime:
"What was it about the war that moved the troops to constant verbal subversion and contempt? It was not just the danger and fear, the boredom and uncertainty and loneliness and deprivation. It was rather the conviction that optimistic publicity and euphemism had rendered their experience so falsely that it would never be readily communicable. They knew that in its representation to the laity what was happening to them was systematically sanitized and Norman Rockwellized, not to mention Disneyfied. They knew that despite the advertising and publicity, where it counted their arms and equipment were worse than the Germans'. They knew that their automatic rifles (World War One vintage) were slower and clumsier, and they knew that the Germans had a much better light machine gun. ... And they knew that the greatest single weapon of the war, the atomic bomb excepted, was the German 88-mm flat-trajectory gun, which brought down thousands of bombers and tens of thousands of soldiers. The Allies had nothing as good, despite one of them designating itself The World's Greatest Industrial Power. The troops' disillusion and their ironic response, in song and satire and sullen contempt, came from knowing that the home front then (and very likely historiography later) could be aware of none of these things." Tough as it is, it is time to come to grips with reality.

And God Bless America is our national anthem, NOT! Last I looked, it was the Star Spangled Banner. What will Steinbrener force upon park attendees next, a specially written paean to himself?

I wonder how the players feel about this.

Someone really needs to push this to the courts. I'm nowhere near NY, so..... who's going to step up to the plate?

simple solution. everyone stay for the song and then go do your business as soon as the first Yankee comes to bat in the bottom of the seventh. if 25,000 people leave their seats when ARod comes to bat, they'll get the hint.

Question the Party? Question Jesus!!

When I was a Yanks season ticket holder (1998-2003) I would sit during God Bless America.

Once when called on it (mid 2003), I told the woman who demanded that I stand and remove my hat that "it's a showtune, not the national anthem and that I will not stand for it."

I also told her "9-11 is over - time to move on"

Big Stein can get bent.

Oh it isn't only at Yankee Stadium anymore. Here in Tucson at minor league games I'm forced to listen to this horrible song. I hate hate hate it!!!!!!!!! I grew up w/Take me out to the Ball game. Whatever happened to that???? It's a ball game.
Where are the damn peanuts and crackerjack????
PLEASE make this stop!!!!!!!

BTW -- When I "goggled" Hate GBAmerica.....I got practically nothing except good old Mother Jones. Thanks MOM!!!
Cheers,
Stacy