The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #64747   Message #2127581
Posted By: Dan Schatz
16-Aug-07 - 10:42 PM
Thread Name: Have anti-war songs changed anything?
Subject: RE: Have anti-war songs changed anything?
If songs can change people, then people can change things. It happens very slowly, over great time, and not alone, but songs can make a difference.

Wendell Berry wrote eloquently about protest:

"Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone's individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence."

Dan Schatz