Well Malcom:
How bout a report from the US from another America than Jed lives in... and Jed, there is more to success than the obvious bottom line...
First and formost, the standard of living in the United States exists because we are consuming 70% of the worlds resources here. Not a very good idea for the promotion of world peace and the hope that children in the third world will have a fullfilling life, eh? Secondly, here in New York, not only are we lagging behind the roaring US ecconomy, but in order to keep the impression that things are good, our mayor who gets mad if you call him a facist, has had the police round up homeless people by giving them summons for public drinking or any other small enfraciton caused by their hopeless situation, when they dont show up in court, they get sent to rikers island, where the prisson is growing so fast they are not housing people in inflateable buildings and on decomissioned Staten Island Ferryboats. We now, in the US in general, have more people (proportionally) in jail than any society in the reorded history of humanity. Add to this the mental institutions, and the fastest growing industry in the US, today, is incarceration.
Now, I am reminded of an old movie title from England, Im alright blow you jack. It seems to me this is not a very Christian way to run a nation, especially one where the right wing claim to be the only Christians on the whole planit.
Terry, as for - May the Lord preserve us from the stereotypical, introspective left-wing folkie who spurns good music if it doesn't carry the correct political message. - No one is advocating censoring the right wing, as they sing such as I am a good old reble or other songs which are not poliitical when they advocate buring the Consitution, but we are saying, that folk music, as music of the people, will always be poliitcal, which is why, as the American working class gets more and more brain washed by those who own them, they will sing more songs about fear of minorities, and think of themselves as non-political...

as for Terrys - Let's keep politics out of it. - Again, sing what ever you like, but dont expect us to take the politic out of what has always been a political forum, I for one as an American performer, will not contribute to the dumbing down of the American worker.
And Terry as for your anticipation of a deluge of hate-posting - believe me, disagreement and hate, in most civilized naitons are quiet different, though in a nation which beats gay people to death and hangs them on fence posts, and allows cops to kill minorities with impunity, I dont think the flow of hate comes from the left, those of us who fought unsucessfully for one hundred years to get anti lynching laws, by the way, organizing through the medium of our music.
Keep your hands on the plow and eyes on the prise folks
Larry