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Conservatives can rock too!

In response to a recent Bruce Bartlett column identifying the top forty “conservative” pop songs of all time, blogger Radley “The Agitator” Balko comes up with his own list in a column for TechCentralStation.

My first reaction to Bartlett’s column was: “Ugh! This list reads like Dave Barry’s ‘Book of Bad Songs’.” How can the list be so overwhelmingly dominated by soulless, ham-fisted schlock? Even the handful of great songs seem out of place — James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” is an all-time R&B masterpiece, but was the Godfather really proffering a conservative worldview, or is Bartlett reading way too much into it? Could it be that statists are just better rockers than us pro-market types? There have to be more hip tunes that carry a conservative message.

Radley Balko’s list is better and fresher, with songs by the Kinks, Vernon Reid and Bob Marley. He also acknowledges the Canadian rock trio Rush, which built an entire concept album around Ayn Rand’s “Anthem”. Good choices, Radley — but there are a handful of classics that both Bartlett and Balko have overlooked.

The finest “conservative” rock song of all time is “Trouble Every Day” by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Now, Zappa wasn’t exactly a Goldwater / Reagan conservative, but remember — pro-democracy, pro-capitalism demonstrators in Czechoslovakia made Zappa’s “Plastic People” their anthem.

“Trouble Every Day” originally appeared on the Mothers’ double LP “Freak Out!” in 1965. Written in reaction to television coverage of the Watts riots in Los Angeles, this tune manages to savage the news media, ridicule the “root cause” mantra of left-liberals, and even take a timely swipe at LBJ’s Great Society. Over a bed of wailing harmonica and Frank’s own razor-sharp blues guitar, he ridicules local press coverage of the riot:

You know I watched that rotten box
until my head began to hurt
From checkin’ out the way
the newsmen say they get the dirt
Before the guys on channel so-and-so,
and further they are certain
That any show they’ll interrupt
to bring ya news if it comes up
If the place blows up,
they’ll be the first to tell
Because the boys they got downtown
are workin’ hard and doin’ swell
And if anybody gets the news
before it hits the street
They say that no one blabs it faster!
Their coverage can’t be beat!

Next, he captures the hypocrisy of the rioters (and their apologists) with startling conviction:

Well, I saw the market burning
and the local people turning
On the merchants and the shops
that used to sell their brooms and mops
And every other household item,
watched a mob just turn and bite ’em
And they say it serves ’em right,
because a few of them were white
And it’s the same across the nation,
black and white discrimination
Yelling “you can’t understand me”
and all that other jive they hand me
On the papers and TV,
and all that mass stupidity
That seems to grow more every day …

Finally, Zappa has a few choice words for would-be revolutionaries, three years before John Lennon excoriated those “minds that hate”:

You know we’ve got to sit around at home
and watch this thing begin
But I bet there won’t be many
who live to see it really end
Because a fire in the street
ain’t like a fire in the heart
And in the eyes of all these people,
don’t you know that this could start
On any street, in any town,
in any state, if any clown
Decides that now’s the time to fight
for some ideal he thinks is right
And if a million more agree,
there ain’t no Great Society
As it applies to you and me,
the country isn’t free

This is a conservative jam if ever there was one. Do I have more? Of course I do. How about Leonard Cohen’s “The Future,” a nightmare vision of totalitarianism and the destruction of western culture? How about Ben Harper’s “Oppression,” a stirring reminder that we all hold the power to overthrow tyranny? How about CCR’s “Keep on Chooglin'”? Okay, maybe not that last one.

Grief Counselling

What do you say to someone whose 20-something daughter has been transformed into a charcoaled cadaver because she was dancing and drinking cocktails? Personally, I have no idea. I really would not know what to say.

Some, however, seem to possess the requisite linguistic tools. One such is Abu Bakar Bashir a Moslem cleric who offered this advise in an interview with the Australian newspaper The Age:

“Asked if there was anything he wanted to say to families who lost relatives in the bomb blast, he said: “My message to the families is please convert to Islam as soon as possible.”

Yes, I have no doubt that they will be falling over themselves in the rush to do just that.

Samizdata slogan of the day

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.
– Margaret Thatcher

The good news and the bad news…

Dale is right, in their simplistic minds, the news anchors miss the real battle.

Finally, France appears favourably disposed to new U.S. proposals for a draft resolution that now drops any immediate authorisation for a military strike against Iraq unless Baghdad balks at U.N. weapons inspections.

Facing major opposition from everybody, except the trusty Brits who supported all the U.S. drafts, the United States radically changed key parts of its earlier draft resolution which authorised any U.N. member to “use all necessary means” if it decided Iraq violated a whole series of infractions. The new text also deletes earlier proposals explicitly threatening “serious consequences.”

It does sound pretty watered down, if you ask me, but after meeting chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix, the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said that a new resolution would not prevent Washington from undertaking a military strike against Iraq:

“The United States does not need any additional authority even now, if we thought it was necessary to take action to defend ourselves.”

The new U.S. compromise has been labelled as a “one-and-a-half step.” Instead of two resolutions – one that would give Iraq an opportunity to comply and a second that would authorise force – if the Security council does not do so after reports by Blix of any failure by Iraq to comply with its disarmament obligations, the United States could decide to strike Iraq anyway, and would probably get considerable support to do so.

What seems to be happening is that the French are backtracking whilst trying to preserve some diplomatic dignity. French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte said France insisted on a “two-staged” approach but did not say if this meant a second resolution. Well, given that the U.S. envoys are going around making statements about the U.S. determination to use military force anyway, and in the light of recent terrorist attacks, the opposing Europeans are starting to look like complete twits. The only reason they can get away with it, is that they look quite reasonable next to the rest of the U.N. twits.

The Russian U.N. ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, sharply criticised any unilateral action and warned the United States not to use the Security Council as an excuse for a military strike or one that would lead to a “regime change.” I am surprised that the holier-than-thou Russian even understands the meaning of “regime change”!

Bangladesh Ambassador Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury opined:

“Every possible effort should be made to avert war. These views are evidently shared by a preponderant majority of the membership of the United Nations. They must be heard, listened to and heeded.”

Yes, and your delusions of relevance must be exposed, dispelled and shown for what they are. An empty rhetoric with potentially dire consequences, endangering lives and safety of millions of innocent citizens whose governments, for once, are trying to have a go at protecting them. It is not often you will hear me support Tony Blair or George Bush as representatives of the state that, in case you missed it, is not your friend…

Joke ova

It’s all been a bit solemn here at Samizdata of late, so here’s an extremely silly final titbit from my Slovak holiday.

One of the oddities of Slovakia for the visiting Anglo is their rule of putting “ova” at the end of every non-Slovak female surname. Julia Robertsova. Meg Ryanova. Gwyneth Paltrowova. Odd, but you soon get used to it. One of these ovas did make me smile, however. The Harry Potter books are big in Slovakia, as everywhere, with all the same symptoms being displayed as in Britain. “When’s the next one out?” say the kids. “Well at least they’re reading something” say the elders. But consider what happens on all the book covers to the name of Harry Potter’s creator J. K. Rowling.

Well, I liked it.

The Crozier Vision of Japan

Patrick Crozier is back from his far eastern expedition. His experiences are now showing up on UK Transport – which deals with transport everywhere, and which will one day, I hope, have its name changed to something more everywhere-sounding – and on CrozierVision – which sounds perfect and which now deals with everything else Crozier-related. Apart from UK Transport’s title my only other quibble is that most of the photos are displayed too small to appreciate properly. I enlarged one of them by mistake while putting this together, and there’s nothing wrong with them that displaying them bigger wouldn’t correct at once.

Such trivia aside, it’s fascinating stuff. For instance, from the latest CrozierVision piece:

We are told that Japan has been in recession or thereabouts for a decade. So, while I was there I thought I’d try to spot the evidence. It wasn’t easy. Cars are new, people are well-dressed, there doesn’t seem to be much abandoned property, restaurants seem busy enough, there don’t seem to be any sales.

I did however spot a shantytown. This one was in Tokyo and there was a similar if smaller one in Nagoya. Even in destitution the Japanese beat us. Quite simply they have a better class of dosser. Take a careful look at the photos and you will spot that in addition to the regulation cardboard box these people also have blue tarpaulins. Pretty sensible really. I also saw plenty of coat hangers presumably so that could hang out their shirts ready for that all important interview. Japanese cardboard cities also don’t smell of stale urine. How they do it I don’t know because public toilets in Japan seem pretty thin on the ground.

Patrick will be doing both of the last Friday of the month talks in November, on the 8th at the Evans household in Putney on Congestion Charging (that’s road pricing before the spin fraternity got hold of it), and on the 29th at my place on – what else? – Japan.

British newsies get it wrong

Anyone who watched news early this evening could not help but hear the joyful chortling of the anchors about the US losing in the UN and being “put back in a box”. Well, as it it turns out it ain’t so.

I had a feeling this was the case. The idea the US would sit back and wait for the mushrooms to sprout is just too ludicrous to imagine… unless you are a European news anchor.

But hey, the TV newsies are going after a UK madrassa for child abuse and doing so with both feet and cleats in the air – so they have some redeeming values. They even aired a quote that a child had been told UK law does not apply inside the Mosque!

I hear the sound of distant goose-steps

The first round of the Mayoral elections are in from Stoke-on-Trent, a provincial town in the British Midlands.

The Labour Party incumbent is running pretty much neck-and-neck with an Independent cadidate but the real news is that the British National Party candidate is only just tucked in behind them and the Conservatives have been pushed into a rather feeble fourth place.

Not time to man the panic stations yet but I suggest that a careful watching brief is maintained.

The Nobel Prize for Evil

Until today, I missed this piece last Friday (Oct 11th) by Tunku Varadarajan for the Wall Street Journal, on the need for a Nobel Non-Science Anti-Prize that could really make sense and do some good. I believe you need to register to make the link work, so here are two of the key paragraphs:

This will not be a joke prize, as the peace prize is; it will be something that Saddam Hussein would get right now, a species of anathema, or international pillory. Apart from being cathartic, a negative award would have a genuine effect on the international order, a real bite in the form of a profound disincentive. Such an award would carry some of the odium of a war-crimes tribunal. No country – or, at least, no civilized country – would allow the winner to visit; and those that do would be tainted. The winner would become a pariah.

Now, that is a deterrent. That kind of award has reason to exist. And it would require some real agonizing over. Imagine the debate: Will it be Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong Il?

Indeed. Several blog-years ago I did a piece on how stupid the Nobel Peace Prize is, on the grounds mostly that peace takes decades to identify, yet they persistently grant it to people who signed alleged peace treaties last Wednesday. Evil, in contrast, can often be identified right now, just as some forms of scientific progress can be. (The cracking of DNA by Watson and Crick springs to mind. As I understand that triumph, they were getting joyously drunk the evening of the day they cracked it.) Likewise, if almost an enitire nation is being systematically starved (as in North Korea right now) you don’t need thirty years to realise how evil that was. So yes, I’m for it.

Seriously, if the blogosphere got behind this notion we could really make it happen. Let nominations commence.

Boring I know, and boringly topical, but I think I’d go with whoever is most in charge of North Korea these days. But if you can suggest someone nastier and make your mud stick, go ahead and good luck to you. That’s the whole point.

How to fight back

Glenn Reynolds over on instapundit commented on this article which says pretty much what I’ve been saying although with quotes from someone more credible than I.

If – as I fear – this is the test run of one of perhaps many attacks of disruption, how do we fight back?

I would posit we will fail utterly if we proceed with the current crime investigation tactics. They are fine for tracking down one serial killer, but are next to useless for dealing with dispersed enemy squadrons.

I suggest anyone living in a “hidden carry” state should buy a handgun with good stopping power; take training in how to use it properly and most importantly in how to make judgements about a situation; and then get your hidden carry approval.

This might not save the targeted victim, but it could make the life expectancy of the sniper after his shot considerably lower. And yes… if we have five or ten million nervous people carrying personal artillery at all times, there will be mistakes and accidents. There always are in warzones in wartime. America has not had to face this on its’ own soil since the 1860’s.

They have only opened the Maryland front so far. We can pray I am entirely wrong… but I very much fear the war will be coming soon to a community near you.

Want to exercise your rights?

If so then people will soon start lying, perjuring and deceiving if they wish to do so in Britain…

Increasingly people may conclude that is the only rational response if they ever find themselves in fear for their life some night in their own home. Barry-Lee Hastings found out what happens if you tell the truth. He killed a burglar in his house using a knife, stabbing him in the back after mistaking a crowbar in the criminal’s hands as a machete.

So if you find yourself confronted by an intruder and you live in Britain, generations of cultural logic tell you to not do what the state would have you do: retreat, surrender your property and realise only the state has the right to use force. No, if that person is British then they will understand that the correct thing to do is to fight for what is yours. They will defend themselves as is their inalienable common law right and if need be, kill the person who is threatening them.

…and so some British homeowner find themselves standing over the dead body of a burglar holding a crowbar.

But because they also read the newspapers, watch the television and hopefully read blogs, they will quickly realise that they are still very much in danger. Once they have calmed down, they will start to examine the body of the dead criminal and what they were holding… and they will make sure that the evidence of the intruder’s clear and present threat to their life is not just manifest but incontrovertible: if necessary they will cut themselves and arrange things to make the reality of their contention ‘hyper-real’. They will conclude there is no shame in defending themselves but they will also realise that it is not just the intruder they must defend themselves against, but also the state which would make them a neutered victim.

If the state wanted to encourage perjury and hostility to the judiciary, it could not have found a better way of going about engendering it. This is Britain’s future as the alienation between the commonsensical British expectation of law and the state’s law grows.

After presiding over Barry-Lee Hastings’ conviction for manslaughter, Judge Barker said:

No one can fail to have sympathy for a householder or visitor who without warning found himself in the position you did when you reached the front door.

Ludicrous dissembling sentiments. I rather doubt Barry-Lee Hastings will give a damn about Judge Barker’s worthless ‘sympathy’ as he rots in jail for the next five years. Well sorry, how is a crowbar in an intruder’s hands not a deadly weapon? The next time this happens, as happen it will, I wonder what the next householder with the bloody knife will tell the police? The unvarnished truth? I have my doubts.

The state is not your friend.

Samizdata slogan of the day

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
– Vaclav Havel