Liberty Song Saturday: America--The Song

There are these Saturdays that never wake up . . . yesterday, it was a monsoon Saturday--hard rain, fog and then drizzle gently falling. And I took a full Shabbat. So, maybe I should change my theme to Liberty Song on a Sundae this week . . . (Geek Alert: You have to have read Lucifer's Hammer to get that one!).

This week, no parody but a real, honest to goodness country song. I was born in northern Illinois, but grew up south. I can speak Chicago--though that's getting harder all the time!--but I can also speak Harrisburg, and Cairo and Kentucky. The soft, drawn out vowels that are not quite southern. I can speak country, because I grew up in McLean County Illinois, surrounded by Mennonite farmers, German and Irish railroaders, and Jewish merchants; Americans all.

This song was inspired by Ellis Island. And sometimes, I swear I forget the trouble they went through, not so long ago, so I could be born on these shores and have the liberty to make the stand I am making. Although I doubt they understood the philosophy of natural rights, or knew the words of the Declaration, they understood that Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness would be theirs if they left everything they knew, to take that dreadful trip in steerage across the Atlantic:

". . . but the weariness and worry must have faded from their eyes,
to behold that lady arising in the sky,
Oh, can't you hear them cry:

America, I hear you calling me,
Sweet land of Liberty,
I'm on my way!
America, beckoning with open arms,
I long to feel the warmth of Freedom's flame!
G-d had given hope a name,
America!"

This week--America: The Song by Dustin James




Dustin says:
"This song has no political agenda. It does not scold the way we are or lament the way we were. It is a simple tribute to a remarkable country by one deeply grateful citizen. . . "

I hope those ones who came before me, they who took a risk so that I could have freedom, will be proud of what we do to claim the liberty they risked everything to obtain.

Liberty Song Saturday: Get Your Money From Nothing--Spread the Wealth from Me

This one's a parody, from Politizoid--another one from an '80's song I liked in the original. This is Dem Straight--Money for Nothing.

"Look at them Yoyo's --that' the way they do it, they spread their Healthcare on the NBC,
This ain't working--that's the way do it, money for nothing, spread the wealth from me . . .

"That crazy lady with the gavel and the facelift,
Yeah, man,, you're really getting dissed,
That crazy lady got her own jet airplane,
That crazy lady is a socialist . . .

"I should have read the Constitution,
I should have learned some history,
Look at that Congress, they just stick it to America, man . . ."




And just to appreciate the changes in technology from MTV then and YouTube now, enjoy the original:



Come on, Nancy--this ain't working!
Come on, Harry--we ain't dumb!

Liberty Song Saturday: Letting the Days Go By (Parody)

Yesterday, which was Saturday, I took a complete computer Shabbat, spending my day enjoying a mountain summer and reading real books (!) lazily on the porch. So here is Liberty Song Saturday--on Sunday this time.

This week, it is a song parody by The Talking Feds. This one illustrates the Obamable lack of leadership in dealing with the Deep Water Horizon well breech in the Gulf.
But I liked the original, too. It fit the mood of the '80's when I heard "Once in Lifetime" as a young mother asking myself, "How did I get here?"

When you've watched parody, check out the original to see the parallels in production between the parody dance moves and the real Talking Heads.

Now, the Talking Feds:

"Letting the days go by--play another round of golf--
Letting the days go by--oil is rising in the gulf--- . . ."

"You may find yourself living in a big White House.
And you may find yourself with the largest oil spill in the world.
And you may find yourself blaming the last administration. . ."

"You may ask yourself: Where is that beautiful beach?
And you may ask yourself: Why did I vote for Obama?
And you may tell yourself: My God! What have I done!"







I never expected, back in the '80's, to see what has happened to us now. I never dreamed how seriously and insanely our world would spin out of control when given into the hands of progressive pols of both parties, who have a post-modernist lack of respect for reality and a passion for . . . nihilism. (That's another blog).

I never thought that I'd actually miss the Reagan administration, with all its faults. As I watched the video of the original Talking Heads song, Once in a Lifetime, I had a powerful moment of nostalgia for those days when my baby daughter brought smiles, and my world--crazy and exciting as it was--rested on the foundation of the values of the United States.

This time--in honor of the moment of wistful nostalgia--I am embedding the original.
Here is the Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime:

Liberty Song Saturday: Every Generation Needs a Revolution . . .

It is a treat to have a brand new song for Liberty Song Saturday, Independence Day Edition.
This is Rise Up! By Jeremy Hoop, and it is featured in the Tea Party Movie.

Despite the overblown fear--what else can you call it?--of the MSM, the Tea Party Movement has been the peaceful rising of the ordinary Americans, those who know that as one sign so aptly puts it: Your Socialist Ends Affect MY Means!
The Tea Parties represent the beginning of the II American Revolution--a Revolution like the first, one that began in the hearts and minds of the people. In Rise Up! Hoop sings:

"Ride with me from Boston to Phili to LA
With reason come marching
With knowledge come drumming
Let everyone hear you
Each soul that is near you
The British are coming! the British are coming!"

How different that is from the Mao-loving, car-burning leftists protesting at the G-20.

Enjoy! And Happy Independence Day! Go to your local Tea Party. Be part of the Jeffersonian Revolution. As Jefferson said (at various times):

"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance?"
" Every generation needs a revolution. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion."
--Thomas Jefferson





Happy Independence Day! And in the spirit of our Founders:
Go Forth and Pursue Happiness!

Liberty Song Saturday: "Steady, Friends, Steady"

After watching our current congress shame itself once again on its march to folly, placing principalities and power over principle, I was in the frame of mind to hearken back to our Founders. They were men who understood the power of liberty to create a fire in the mind, and who with honor and courage faced down the might of a corrupt British Empire. They took to task a parliament and king whose own march to folly was made to the tune of narrow personal interests that caused them to deny the power and ingenuity of free men and women.

During the Stamp Act Crisis following the French and Indian War, the colonists so thoroughly resisted the various stamp taxes that the Parliament had to rescind them. They opposed this taxation by Parliament because they did not have representation in it, and they understood this to be a violation of their Rights of Englishmen, protected by the amorphous but none-the-less real English Constitution.

Because of the hated Stamp Act, our Founders began to understand that the corrupt interests of the men who controlled Parliament did not represent the interests of either Englishmen living in England or the interests of the Englishmen in her American colonies. And they knew that they had to resist. That resistance did not come easily. It required that they close their courts, refuse the stamps from England to land on American soil, and that they refuse to trade in English goods requiring the stamp. As often is the case, these political acts were economic as well, and required the American people their "money to give."

This was the revolution of the mind, when these former Englishmen opened their eyes to what they had created on the American continent, and began to think of themselves as a new and different kind of human being, as Americans. As John Adams put it, the real revolution occured then, as the thinking of Americans changed, causing them to become the people who would face down an empire and win. Adams wrote:

"The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and the hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations . . . This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments and affections of the people was the real American Revolution."

John Dickenson of Pennsylvania, author of Letters from an American Farmer, penned the Liberty Song in 1768, and it was first published in the Boston Gazette. Newspapers then, as the the Internet is now, were the first line of political resistance. Then, the forces of tyranny in the form of Parliament with the Stamp Act, and Royal Governors with their power to close down the presses, vainly attempted to stop "hate speech" against the King and Parliament. Now, the forces of tyranny in the FCC and FTC regulatory commissions--at the behest of the executive branch that empowers them, would like to place taxes and limits on our ability to publish freely in order to stop us from speaking out against the administration and its policies. For our resistance is deemed "hate speech."

The Liberty Song, sung to the tune of the older Hearts of Oak, an anthem of the Royal Navy, is the proper answer to tyrants who would silence us in their drive to disavow our Constitution that keeps safe the Rights of Americans:

"All Ages shall speak, with amaze and applause,

Of the courage we'll show in support of our laws.

To die we can bear, but to serve we disdain,

For shame is to Freedom more dreadful than pain.

Chorus: In Freedom we're born, and in Freedom we'll live,

Our purses are ready; Steady, friends, steady!

Not as slaves, but as freemen, our money we'll give."

Here then is the liberty song, sung by a Ron Paul R3volutionary. Note that he changed the last verse, as a tribute to Dr. Ron Paul.

This is America's first protest song. And it is amazing that they were protesting a venal, self-involved Parliament, much as we have been sickened by a venal, self-involved Congress.
Just as our Founders were in the Revolution of the heart and mind during the Stamp Act Crisis, I believe that we are in a R3volution of heart and mind now, and we begin to wake up to the destruction of our Constitution and way of life at the hands of the collectivists.

May Liberty Prevail!

G-d Save the Constitution of the United States.

Liberty Song Saturday: Memorial Day

Amazing Grace in the wild, mournful tones of the bagpipes, to sing those fallen in battle to sleep.
War is terrible, and death is final. And yet, we become their world --we live their hopes and dreams-- when we remember them.

Liberty Song Saturday: Pendulum

Here is a cover of Pendulum by Jordan Page with a video that includes numerous quotes from the Articles of Freedom. It was originally put together as an ad for the Articles of Freedom Delivery Day--Patriot's Day, April 19, 2010. The Articles of Freedom were delivered to certain officials at every state capitol on that day.

The song, Pendulum, expresses the singer/songwriter Jordan Page's frustration with the false left-right paradigm:

". . . and the pendulum swings from the left to the right,
the momentum increases, the weight and the height,
But if nobody's listening, is anyone right?
And I can't find the key to the middle . . ."

This song is also about Page's personal observations of what is happening to his country and its Constitution:

"I saw a president blind to the needs of his people,
I saw a camel that passed through the eye of a needle,
I saw a group of old men whose money was evil . . ."

"I saw beggars and cripples dying in squalor,
I a saw a son whose sins has exceeded his father's,
I saw a nation of sleepers whose dreams were forgotten,
and a bushel of apples from a tree that was rotten. . ."

And finally, this is a song about Page's personal journey to the R3volution:

"I met a young woman with a baby inside her,
I looked but there wasn't a safe place to hide her;
I met an old man with a face like a mirror,
he showed me his sadness so I could see clearer . . ."

The quotes from the Articles of Freedom are special in their own right, and here they go together with the song. The Articles of Freedom document how our government has abrogated the Constitution, and how the actions of our elected officials in all three branches of government have destroyed Liberty. The Articles of Freedom are also a powerful call to action on the part of we, the people, to restore our Liberty by requiring our government to obey the Constitution.

Although the Articles of Freedom have been delivered to government officials in every state capitol already, it is still imperative that we join together to take the peaceful but forceful actions necessary to withdraw our support from a government bent on tyranny and the destruction of our Liberty.

If you love Liberty, go to the link above and sign the pledge.

It is our right and our duty to change a government that has become an instrument of tyranny.

Introducing Liberty Song Saturday . . .

Somewhere there's a picture of one of my ancestors in some little town in Poland or Lithuania carrying the black flag of anarchy while singing the Anti-Fascist March.

The word Anarchy means "no ruler" and the idea that my anarchist ancestor espoused was that each person is sovereign over his own life.

Anarchy does not mean "no law", although those who fight for their individual rights are often accused of lawlessness when they oppose oppressive governments.

Anarchy does not mean "no morality." A thoughtful anarchist understands that the nature that endows a human being with individual rights requires the most rigorous of morality--not one of tradition or convenience--but an objective requirement that the individual rights of all must be respected, and that all morality springs from that.


Many anarchists believe in a kind of stateless communism in which all property is held in common.

Other anarchists are radical libertarians who dream of a "libertopia" that is stateless capitalism, in which each person possesses complete sovereignty over herself and her property.

Today's liberty song is called Justice Day and the lyrics are by Claire Wolfe of Jews for the Protection of Firearms Ownership. These lyrics have an anarchist bent, promoting the idea that when the lawmakers become lawless (rule of men rather than laws), then the outlaw becomes the champion of justice.

"When the criminals, criminals make all the laws,
then anyone breaking them fight just cause . . ."

The song begins with the immortal image from 1984: "You're the boot stomping on the human face--forever - -"

More anarchist imagery is heard with phrases like: " . . .Then out of the darkness the rebels arise, on that day, on that day the outlaw will rise . . ."




Even the person who posted this to YouTube thought it was "leftist", but JPFO is libertarian--and the most radical libertarians are anarchists in the spirit of Lysander Spooner. However, there are those libertarians who think of anarchy as an ideal to be dreamed, but as a matter of policy support minarchy--the concept of a state with very little power--and follow the spirit of the American Founders.

I am a libertarian who has dreamed the anarchist dream, but I also realize that restoring the Constitution, which provides us with a very limited government, is work enough for one lifetime.