Iw­er George’s song Hap­py Peo­ple seemed to have made a lot of peo­ple, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, un­hap­py.

The PM said, “You stand when the Na­tion­al An­them is be­ing sung for a rea­son and that gives it a pro­file and a place that no oth­er song has and on that ba­sis, I would say that the Na­tion­al An­them should not be treat­ed in that way.”

I com­mend George for re­mov­ing the Na­tion­al An­them from his song, which he in­ti­mat­ed was to bring Trinidad and To­ba­go back to a place of “proud­ness, re­spect, love and hap­pi­ness”.

This sparked de­bate, with strong opin­ions for and against, but a sim­i­lar de­bate had start­ed be­fore.

In high­light­ing racial in­equal­i­ty, Bas­deo Pan­day once said we should sing, ‘May every creed and race find an equal place’, in­stead of ‘here’.

A sim­i­lar protest was start­ed in the US in 2016, when some black ath­letes start­ed kneel­ing on one knee while their an­them was played.

At the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny for Car­ifes­ta XIV in 2019, then-pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes crit­i­cised the “un­ac­cept­able ren­di­tion” of the Na­tion­al An­them, which she said “must be sung in its orig­i­nal mu­sic; no in­tro­duc­tion or co­da can be added or oth­er artis­tic li­cence tak­en in its ren­di­tion”.

Some cit­i­zens have con­cerns with women pos­ing in biki­nis made with our na­tion­al flag de­sign.

In the US, flag des­e­cra­tion has been used as a sign of protest and the US Supreme Court has ruled that burn­ing the flag in protest is pro­tect­ed free speech. The US jus­tices stat­ed, “If there is a bedrock prin­ci­ple un­der­ly­ing the First Amend­ment, it is that the gov­ern­ment may not pro­hib­it the ex­pres­sion of an idea sim­ply be­cause so­ci­ety finds the idea it­self of­fen­sive or dis­agree­able.”

It is more than our flag or an­them. Some have shown no re­spect for the dead, re­li­gious places, or places of learn­ing and this begs the ques­tion, is any­thing sa­cred any­more?

For­mer US Chief of Staff, Gen­er­al John Kel­ly, speak­ing about the sa­cred­ness of a sol­dier’s death, said, “When I was a kid grow­ing up, a lot of things were sa­cred in our coun­try. Women were sa­cred and looked up­on with great ho­n­our. That’s not the case any­more, as we see from re­cent cas­es. Life, the dig­ni­ty of life, was sa­cred. That’s gone. Re­li­gion, that seems to be gone as well.”

A few years ago, a fu­ner­al home planned a Car­ni­val fete on its com­pound. It was mar­ket­ed as the first “memo­r­i­al Car­ni­val fete”, with the date for the par­ty­ing as “Date of Ser­vice”, the in-house disc jock­ey was re­ferred to as the “Of­fi­ci­at­ing Min­is­ter” and the en­trance fee as the “Of­fer­ing”.

The EMA thank­ful­ly halt­ed this.

We have wit­nessed both mur­dered and dead ac­ci­dent vic­tims be­ing robbed while ly­ing bleed­ing on the ground. A prison of­fi­cer had his firearm stolen af­ter he was shot dead. We rather record a vic­tim than ren­der as­sis­tance.

Places of wor­ship are be­ing des­e­crat­ed.

The Church of the As­sump­tion in Mar­aval, the Mt St Bene­dict monastery, and San Rafael RC Church, were among some church­es bro­ken in­to, as well as mosques in San­gre Grande, Cara­po and Table­land, and Hin­du tem­ples in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try.

We now see places of learn­ing be­ing robbed. Schools pro­vid­ing ed­u­ca­tion for our chil­dren are not re­spect­ed.

This dis­re­spect for our places of learn­ing start­ed be­fore. When the NAR was in gov­er­nance, un­der Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Clive Pan­tin, no al­co­hol was al­lowed on the school com­pound, and no Car­ni­val fetes with al­co­hol were al­lowed.

We had no mixed mes­sages telling youths not to drink but al­lowed their schools to have all-in­clu­sive par­ties. The Hin­du and Pres­by­ter­ian schools still adopt this no-al­co­hol pol­i­cy.

Then the law, where a bar can­not op­er­ate with­in a cer­tain dis­tance from places of wor­ship or a school, is of­ten breached.

We cre­ate the dis­re­spect.

The St An­tho­ny’s Ro­man Catholic Church re­cent­ly had to tell peo­ple about the prop­er dress code for en­ter­ing a church. I re­mem­ber orh­nis were worn in tem­ples and hats in church­es, de­cen­cy pre­vailed.

John Hor­vat wrote, “Where God and his law are mocked and de­spised, it is on­ly nat­ur­al that moral­i­ty too will be ex­pelled from the pub­lic sphere. Noth­ing will be safe. Noth­ing will be sta­ble. Noth­ing will be sa­cred any­more.”

But the nu­mer­ous pae­dophil­ia cas­es in­volv­ing priests have our young dis­il­lu­sioned.

With most mar­riages last­ing four years, do we still re­vere mar­riage as a sa­cred in­sti­tu­tion?

We live in a cul­ture where, in­creas­ing­ly, any sense of the sa­cred is be­ing lost.

There are many in our cul­ture who de­fend the rights of oth­ers to burn the flag and ridicule re­li­gious sym­bols. Peo­ple are liv­ing in a world al­most de­void of any no­tion of the sa­cred.

Ho­n­our is de­part­ing our world.

Is noth­ing sa­cred? Ap­par­ent­ly not.