I love this song, which grows deeper and deeper the more one listens to it. On first hearing it many years ago, I dismissed it as Phil Ochs's attempt to grab a chunk of "This Land Is Your Land" real estate.

Its title, by the way, is not "The Power and the Glory." It is "Power and the Glory," and the first word refers specifically to American power, of the kind the country fell into in the years after World War II, and the hubris (Ochs had the Vietnam War in mind) that flowed from it, to the tragic diminishment of the ideals that should have led the national experiment.

Ochs sings that it is not power that represents glory, but traditions of liberty, always worth preserving and treasuring. Power is passing, while liberty should be eternal.

This is Ochs's wisest, most moving, and lasting political song. It should be the national anthem, but I suppose there are those who would reject its sentiments as too radical. In fact, it couldn't be more American.