"If You Don't Like Your Uncle Sammy" can be found on Fred Hellerman's recording,,
"Caught in the Act". I guess Cohan wrote it.

Bob Gibson and I were reacting to a didactic period in New York where a lot of Lefties were
singing songs in a manner that we thought at the time was quite phony. The people I'm referring to didn't have a clue about the reality of the struggles of the labor movement.

We lampooned People's Artists for what we thought at the time was a doctrinaire and
superficial view of "issues". I've since regarded the song as just a period I went through and
over the years an have developed and researched enough to know that the naïveté of the
kids at that time didn't preclude the genuine injustices that People's Artists knew were there. But there was a attitude, a little pompous although I'm happy now for the advent of People's Songs and People's Artists. What we wrote could be construed as a right wing song but I've never personally identified or associated with the politics of the "right" which I consider "wrong".

Anyway, here's what we went through.

Sing a song for People's Artists,
Balladeers unite.
Buy your latest People's songbook,
There's a hoot tonight.

Organize and fertilize and sing your little song.
You are right on every issue, all the rest are wrong.

(I think the tune is The Internationale but I'm not sure.)

Tom Lehrer wrote a parody called "The Folk Song Army". I think
we were more of a mind in those days that we agreed that arm chair activism was a
contrivance. Bob Gibson, Erik Darling, Ed McCurdy and others reacted in a similar way
about the pomposity of younger people with all the answers.

Even today, there are Lefties who really don't have a clue about
the pain and suffering that people on the Left went through for their
idealism and conscience. I remember McCarthy period well and saw
friends who were victimized by the intolerance in the country. I refer you
to the song "Hold The Line" about 1949's Peekskill riot at a Robeson concert as a
case in point. My friend Pete Seeger went through quite a period of hard-nosed
political views but as he aged, became more understanding and suspicious of
the Soviet leaders, and totally rejected Stalin in particular. At the end of his life, he was disillusioned as was Robeson about the rigidity of Soviet times. To his credit he didn't
do a 180 in rejection of Moscow's authoritarian position. He kept his human
and social idealism.

BTW, if you want an extreme right wing protest song, look to the Civil
War for "The Unreconstructed Rebel".

It's so important today to see the human picture of why right wingers feel as
they do. There needs to be songs about that. Fleming's "Flag of Blue" brings
this to light. We need to understand the side we don't agree with. And agree to disagree.

Vern Partlow said it in "Old Man Atom". "Peace in the world or the world in pieces."