In “God Bless the U.S.A.,” how does Lee Greenwood conflate patriotism with adherence to traditional American gender and family roles? How do the song’s gender politics line up with postwar domestic ideology as characterized by Elaine Tyler May?
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Greenwood begins the song by envisioning a situation in which his possessions were lost and he would have to restart his life with only his wife and children, implying that the importance of the typical nuclear family continues from the ’50s until his later version of conservatism. The nuclear family is the thing that defines one’s life more than wealth or achievement, he says, but this does not mean that working to gain wealth or power is antithetical to family values. Greenwood says he would “start again” from the beginning, but that beginning is not truly without any advantages. Since “the flag still stands for freedom,” Greenwood’s narrator can hope to regain what he had before giving it all up, and his family supports him in that. As May notes, the “centrality of the family” (27) in the prosperity of the post-war economy made the family a motivator for and supporter of consumerism, and Greenwood implies that losing wealth is in part ameliorated by the fact that retaining a family will encourage and facilitate regaining that wealth. And, Greenwood says, that makes America something to be proud of: that the family’s importance is recognized, and that everybody has an opportunity to aim for more prosperity for themselves and their family in particular.