Watch: Buffalo Bills Christen New $2 Billion Stadium with Horrible Anthem Choice, Stunning Viewers
The secular world so often leaves conservatives exasperated that even we might struggle to understand the sources of our exasperation.
For instance, on Thursday evening, the NFL’s Buffalo Bills opened their brand-new $2.1 billion Highmark Stadium with the singing of “O Canada,” the Canadian national anthem, followed by a 41-31 victory over the visiting Detroit Lions, who, notably, do not hail from Canada.
The unusual performance of the Canadian anthem in a game that featured no Canadian teams left many conservatives rankled. It is well worth our while to reflect on the reasons why.
First, we should establish the relevant contexts, both narrow and broad.
According to The Athletic, the Bills viewed the anthem as part of a “business” initiative. After all, residents of Southern Ontario make up a significant percentage of the team’s fan base.
Pete Guelli, Bills president of business operations, explained.
“For us, it’s all about the business,” Guelli said. “This is part of a broader marketing effort into Southern Ontario and Toronto. It’s been a critical part of our business model, and it’s going to continue to be. This has been in the works prior to anything that’s come up on the (geopolitical) front.”
More broadly, of course, that “geopolitical” context added an element of subversiveness to the anthem decision.
Shortly after his election in 2024, President Donald Trump began hinting at efforts to make Canada the 51st state. At the time, and again more recently, the Trump administration also took a hard line on the U.S.-Canada trade relationship.
Thus, fueled by business considerations, and in a heated political context, the all-male Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies, who enjoyed commercial success with some recognizable songs in the 1990s, took the field to sing “O Canada.”
On the social media platform X, users called the performance a “mistake,” “weird,” and a “slap in the face.”
Singing the Canadian National Anthem at the Buffalo Bills home opener was a mistake…
There’s ZERO reason to honor a foreign country when a Canadian team is not involved in this game whatsoever.
This was an idiotic decision. pic.twitter.com/hK9Q0wRzCD
— Jon Root (@JonnyRoot_) September 18, 2026
That was weird. Hope it never happens again.
— Sam Chau (@Sammy_Torino) September 18, 2026
I couldn’t believe that when I watched it on Amazon tonight. What a slap in the face. Shame on the NFL.
— Gallatin River Hunter (@Jakabolan) September 18, 2026
So why did conservatives hate it so much?
For starters, Barenaked Ladies delivered a terrible performance. If you must sing a foreign country’s anthem on U.S. soil, at least do it well.
By contrast, singer and actress Auli’i Cravalho, best known as the voice of Disney’s Moana, belted out a flawless and stirring rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
What a scene at Highmark Stadium. 🇺🇸
🗣️ Auliʻi Cravalho pic.twitter.com/05xaJoYpRy
— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) September 18, 2026
To understand the deeper reasons why conservatives hated the Canadian anthem, however, consider the following comments from Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur.
“This destruction of our historic alliance has made Canadians really, really mad and also scared as a country,” Arthur said, according to the New York Times. “I don’t know that there’s ever any coming back from that because it has been such an eruption. But this kind of gesture still matters.”
“The more points of light we see like this in what we feel as an emerging and terrifying darkness, the more we are reminded that one day this can be repaired; we view it with fondness.”
Points of light? Terrifying darkness? Why must liberals always resort to such exhausting hyperbole? And why this hyperbole in particular? Was “threat to democracy” unavailable?
Moreover, why do liberals always insist on a “gesture”? The answer to that question goes a long way toward explaining why conservatives and liberals react to these things so differently.
In 2020, for instance, when liberals demanded a racial reckoning following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, Americans got a new holiday — Juneteenth — ostensibly marking the end of slavery in 1865.
Conservatives, too, abhor slavery. And we thank the Republicans, including President Abraham Lincoln, who fought Democrats in order to destroy it. But that is not what leaps to mind when we think of Juneteenth.
What leaps to mind is the self-serving and thus empty nature of the gesture. True, federal employees and other liberals got a day off in June. But how has Baltimore fared since 2020? What about Detroit? Did Juneteenth restore electrical power to Gary, Indiana?
In other words, by preening about Juneteenth, liberals got to feel good about themselves. They got to pose as our moral superiors. Meanwhile, they improved no one’s life. In places where black people actually live, citizens continue to languish under disastrous liberal policies and administrations.
As a “gesture,” Thursday’s Canadian anthem performance had all the qualities of Juneteenth. It improved no one’s life. It simply made liberals on both sides of the border feel superior.
During the Black Lives Matter madness of 2020, the NFL did something similar when the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans opened the season with a show of “unity,” only to incur boos from Chiefs fans in attendance. As legendary conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh noted at the time, those fans objected not to unity, but to the condescending presumptuousness of the league and its players, who apparently thought fans should embrace yet another empty and thus self-serving “gesture.”
That is no trivial objection. In fact, it goes to the heart of what divides conservatives from liberals.
Moved by Christianity, we conservatives, though wildly imperfect, prefer working quietly and with appropriate modesty to help others. We know that any good we do comes from Jesus Christ working inside us. Otherwise, left to ourselves, our wretchedness would only add to the world’s misery.
Liberals, on the other hand, think themselves good people — the best, in fact. It’s what makes them liberals. If you watch and listen to them long enough, you will see this reflected in nearly everything they say and do.
Moreover, liberals always seem to solicit the good opinions of those who conservatives rightly regard as unworthy of the solicitation.
That does not mean, of course, that Americans should withhold friendship from Canadians. In fact, as our neighbors, Canadians deserve both kindness and respect.
It does mean, however, that Americans are under no obligation to accept the assertion implicit in the “gesture”: namely, that the U.S. and Canada share important values and thus a special relationship that entitles Canadians to some kind of special consideration.
The events of recent years, including the COVID-19 pandemic, have proven otherwise. The same holds true with regard to Western Europe, Australia, and other alleged “allies.”
All of this might seem like too much political weight for a single anthem performance to bear. It is impossible, however, to explain conservatives’ exasperation apart from any of these factors.
In short, conservatives hated the performance of the Canadian national anthem in Buffalo because we reject both the inferred message and the perennial condescension of the messengers.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
