The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #8470   Message #1103178
Posted By: musicmick
28-Jan-04 - 01:36 AM
Thread Name: Right Wing Folksongs
Subject: RE: Right Wing Folksongs
It seems to me that, if one can avoid knee jerk invective, American conservatives oppose collective solutions to social problems (poverty, inequality, racial interaction, etc) and American liberals favor societal solutions to societal issues. Thus, songs that promote individual rights reflect conservative values and songs that exhort group response reflect liberalism. In this regard, religious songs would seem to be more in the liberal camp yet those people who most often identify themselves as conservatives are, frequently, the most likely to identify themselves as religious. There is certainly no more obvious an example of "group conciousness" than organized religion. Should Gospel be classified as right wing or left?
Private property rights is the main bone of contention between right and left. Conservatives champion property rights and oppose laws that limit them. Does that mean that songs about owning your own farm or house are right wing? Wasn't the promise of land the real lure that brought the Europeans to America? Weren't your parents and mine denied the right to own land in Europe (mine sure were) and isn't the American Dream about owning your own home? Does ownership taint, by nature? Does a mortgage include membership in the Republican Party? Was Lee Hayes a closet conservative when he wrote, in "Times Are Gettin' Hard", "...Gonna have the best old farm that you have ever seen."?
My point is that it might be well to consider those things that unite left and right, to stop demonizing one another and to appreciate that neither side has a monopoly on rightiousness.