Nashville Country Music Singers Praise America and Our Flag.

If you’ve been to Nashville or Music City and Smashtown as they call it,  then you know that all they feature here are patriotism, the flag and country music. It’s just the way it is. Like it or leave it, no hard feelings.

I was fortunate to love all three while being escorted around downtown one night. My hosts took me to some of the hot spots, there were just too many to choose from, and I would have been lost trying to find the “right” ones. They even got me to some special entrances to by-pass the lines.

At least five blocks on either side of the main boulevard as far as I could tell boasted a string of country bars and clubs. Okay there was an occasional souvenir shop to break up the monotony, but a bar or two for every building, some three stories high dwarfed by tall office buildings all around. Every place had a band or two. And as one broke down, another was setting up. Just to play at any of  these venues, you had to be one step from stardom.

The people here are friendly, down to earth and they come from all over the country. You can learn a lot from a place like this just from conversation and the performances. For example, I learned from a taxi driver that there were fathers in Nashville escaping family court abuses by seeking asylum in foreign countries. At one club, the lead singer of a large band dedicated a series of songs to our military, emphasizing that he came from a family generation of service men.

It occurred to me during all the cheering for our military that we were toasting men and fathers that were coming home to unjust laws and discrimination. It convinced me that my trip down here was for a worthy cause because I still find myself unable to reconcile these praises with the conduct of our government when the same service men return to the states. 

As many of you know from our recent posts, I am seeking funding behind a  “We Are Fathers” campaign designed to secure long overdue equality and fair treatment in our nation’s divorce and family courts. I was therefore proud to join the toast of the lead singer with much more than a glass. 

I raised my report high in the air to signify that there were people in his audience doing something more profound to assure that the rights and freedoms promoted by our military were being protected here at home. Nashville, what a wonderful town, truly the heart of America.

Dr. Leon R. Koziol

(315) 796-4000