THE INTERNATIONAL IDEAL UNITES THE HUMAN RACE. That's from one translation of a May Day standard. The May Day to come is apparently to feature more immigration-rights protests, with a new Spanish language adaptation of "The Star-Spangled Banner." I say "new Spanish-language adaptation" as there is an older translation (which appears to have dropped one stanza) without the in-your-face identity politics in the adaptation that is provoking some controversy.

I have been using the term "adaptation" as more accurate than the popular description of this song as a Spanish version of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The National Anthem itself uses a British drinking tune (you really have to have a few pints in you to assay those high notes); "Let petty tyrants" borrows a hymn tune called Chester; Battle Hymn of the Republic is a new setting of John Brown's Body, which itself probably uses some British or Irish drinking tune (do I have any musicologist readers to help out?); and one can sing Deutschland uber alles to Beethoven's Choral Symphony.

That history of adaptation puts this comment from an advocate of tighter border controls in perspective.

"Would the French accept people singing the [c.q.] La Marseillaise in English as a sign of French patriotism? Of course not," said Mark Krikorian, head of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports tighter immigration controls.

Perhaps not, but that won't stop protestors from adapting the tune. I have a recording of the Worker's Marseillaise in Russian, where the title translates as "We Renounce the Old World." (Such recordings could once be cheaply bought on the Melodiya label, with the Evil Empire subsidizing the export of revolutionary culture to overcome our bourgeois false consciousness. Now imperialist Smithsonian bookstore has resale rights.)