Musket: "You know, the words "socialist" "conservative" and "liberal" tend to conjure up different images in The US than they do over here. So Goofus for once may have an excuse for his confusion."

No confusion at all, They are ALL bought and paid for, and people who subscribe so wholeheartedly to any of them is not only confused, but manipulated to be that way!!

To whom it may concern:
Let's take a musical example of one of the earlier masters of 'social commentary'...and most all here would agree that he certainly helped in getting the ball rolling, insofar as 'social consciousness'...Reminisce, and enjoy!!
..ahh, the memories...and he, Joan and the song made the 'straight establishment' both puzzled, leery..but the song was GREAT...and it got everyone's attention....right??....but wait, this 'social commentator' also wrote this song in that same time period....and just as objective ....which brings us back to the topic of the thread.. "Folk Singers who are Politically Conservative"....(and let's not forget Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction", which he still performs, while punctuating his concerts with Christian evangelism!

Both McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" AND Baez doing "There But For Fortune" came out about the same time(roughly), and because both those songs addressed the human condition, FROM THE HEART, and were great tunes, they caught our attention...they became 'anthems of hipness'....and we took an interest in what these people were about. Shit, it started a trend in the 'mainstream' young, idealistic, looking for direction, youth who felt various degrees of disenfranchisement....YOU may just have been one of them...so ya' buy a guitar, and venture onto your lifelong quest..to be a wannabe....never writing or composing shit that was THIS hip.....but the political rap seemed close enough...and you cherry pick the stuff, that doesn't betray how really lame you were....and after a short while, you become the very establishment, you THOUGHT you were rebelling against.
We used to have an expression that described people like that.."If ya' 'turn-on' a lame, whatch you get, is a 'turned-on' lame".
....and you hope I'm talkin' 'bout somebody else.....and the biggest lames are the deepest entrenched ones, and will not, can not...even refuse to admit, that their life's approach, is so screwed up with political mental illness...they make excuses for every hypocrisy shoved down their idealistically gullible throats..just not to consider, that the very bullshit that they embrace, really gets in the way of the music and lyrics they COULD be writing and performing, that says WAY MORE as a 'social commentary' than the re-hashed, regurgitated political crap that they also savor....and in doing so, the only people who would even listen to those 'political protest songs' are just idiots who haven't flashed yet, that compassion for humans is NOT the job, nor the intention of ANY political persuasion....it's all window dressing the control games...and you are welcomely invited to be an ineffectual 'non-threat', and your music reflects it....with nothing to say..that isn't controlled!

.....and then you grow up to be old farts, still clinging to the life raft of some 'group identity'!!!......when you COULD HAVE been a musician/poet, with something REAL to say.....and one emerges, both the 'Conservatives' and 'Liberals' will dig up some sort of label('right' or 'left') to brand you, so they can both continue to stop up their ears...and deflect the truth, that you are the lame!!!

So Sincerely,

GfS