It was already noted early in the campaign that Barack Obama had added to the campaign of the liberals a deep strain of patriotism that had already been long absent from our view of ourselves and of our history. Well, yes, there had been a shocked spurt of love of country after 9/11. But many liberals just couldn't tolerate the thought that Americans felt injured by the fact that Third World Muslim gangsters claimed justice in their mass murders at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the lonely fields of Pennsylvania.

This renaissance, spurred by Obama, seemed authentic and also wide. So it also rankled many conservatives who had come to think of themselves as the sole holders and the only genuine conveyors of the message. In this sense, too, Obama has ignited something of a revolution. And it was not so much a revolution among black people but among whites. Blacks never doubted their unrequited love of country, and that is what made the relationship true tragedy. This is also what made privileged whites so haughty.

There were many patriotic moments during the Inaugural festivities, cross-class, cross-faith, cross-race. This, in a country that had taught us so easily, that we could live cross-nothing.

Someone at Yo-Yo's Silk Road Ensemble has just sent me a youtube link to their performance at the Sunday pre-Inaugural concert sponsored by The New Republic. It's a snippet of the whole, but the whole of the Star Spangled Banner is there, although without words. The music is sublime. It needs no verbal prodding and no verbal crescendos either. It is America pure, and God bless that America.