If I may make a(n) - only slightly caustic - comment from a foreigner's viewpoint: Given the ethnic background of the current US President I find the victory of the Union (lest we forget: lucidly forseen by Rhett Butler even with a drink in his hand!) of such resounding and lasting nature that Confederate nostalgia can be viewed with the benignly-bemused anthropological eye all tribal gatherings of lesser developed cultures deserve. I think it will be a long time before an American President will be either a plantation or cotton mill owner again. Baby seal hunteress maybe.
Erasing the Confederate flag from historical sites is ahistorical crap, waving it at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert a matter of dubious taste and flaunting it to identify somehow with the political culture, sociology and economic foundation of what were the Confederate States a clinical condition.
That said, the design of the flag as such is nice, but so is the design of your Stars and Stripes (unlike ours). In contrast, I never thought much of the melody of your National Anthem, it is devoid of the dynamics that make America great and special. It doesn't send shivers down my spine like the (lyrically grossly violent!) French
and Russian (Soviet Union) ones.
Perhaps you should have let Gershwin write a new one?
I'm neither here nor there with the German one btw, it's actually a slightly melancholic, almost church-type tune
if not performed in the military marching band brass style the Nazis preferred.
