-Progressives Lincoln Steffens, “The Shame of the Cities” Problem: - “No one class is at any fault, nor any one breed” – misgovernment of the American people is misgovernment by the American people. The typical citizen is the businessman, who is a bad citizen because he is busy with his affairs. Big businessmen use politics to get what they want. Don’t try and reform politics with businessmen- politics is not “their line”- their line is making money. Solution: - Businessmen like supply and demand- so if they’re our politicians, let us demand good government. “Politics is Business”. Until demand for good government increases, businessmen will continue to see politics as a way to promote self-interest at the expense of the public interest. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle Supports Steffen’s point. Greed and self-interest over the interests of the people. The goal of the book was to expose the slave wages the lower levels of the United States economy endured. In reality he exposed the unsanitary conditions tied to the meat packing industry in Chicago. *** Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis Problem: - People who put profit before goodness are sinners. People aren’t just a thing which produce more things. Profit is put first. Prosperity is measured by production instead of by the welfare of the people. Economics teaches us to think about what is best for goods instead of man. The law is a moral agency. Religion creates morality, which is deposited in laws. Solution: - Church should work with the state to improve social conditions. Political economy must become humancentric. Christianize it by putting man before wealth- like Socialists. The Church can make customs, which influence laws. Unwritten laws rule our lives in many ways- social mores, values, etc. Anti-alcohol. Monsignor Ryan, A Living Wage Problem: - Dependency is sometimes inevitable. Solution: - *** Catholic doctrine requires people to be guaranteed a share of the social product through a minimum wage. The State can prevent a lot of distress caused by circumstance. The state doesn’t have unlimited power to deal with social distress, but it should help. John Dewey, Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, Problem: - Scoffs at all the “transcendent” and “unknowable absolutes”. Its bullshit. Even if timeless truths existed, the world wouldn’t be any better off by knowing them. Ultimately, people will use these concepts to get what they want. In politics these ideas are a wash. Solution: - Pragmatism is the way to go. Use Darwinian methods of observation and experience to inform. Believing in these absolute truths and “ways” of the universe lets us shift the burden of responsibility to make changes off our shoulders. The Public and its Problems Solution: - Community is central to democracy. We need a scientifically informed and critical public opinion. Government exists to serve the community, and the community needs to be active in selecting leaders and determining policies. Democracy is the idea of community life itself. Don’t revere established institutions like the Constitution, etc. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion Analysis: - The world we deal with is politically out of reach, out of mind. We don’t meet everyone in the nation, for example. It’s an imagined community. We make opinions of this world beyond our reach from mass media which constitute our public opinions. The Will of the People comes from leaders, who are in direct contact with their environment- they do the bargaining and the ordering. Their subordinates (workers) or followers don’t. Privileges hold the machine together. It’s a bunch of concentric circles, with only the tiny middle circle really in contact with the realities. Unity is made through symbolism. MANUFACTURE CONSENT. “The question of fare on subways is symbolized as an issue between the People and the Interests, and People are then symbolized as Americans, so in a campaign an eight cent fare becomes unAmerican.” Symbols unite groups, and are a mechanism of exploitation, an instrument to create a Will or a movement. *** Croly, The Promise of American Life Intellectual foundation for NEW NATIONALISM Analysis: - - We need Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. Need Hamilton’s interventionist means of big government through labor and business regulation to achieve Jefferson ideas of greater democracy and equality for the less privileged. What is good for one generation may not be good for the next- it depends upon circumstance. Needs change. A demand for equality, even in form of equal rights, is bad- what is good for the community may mean a bit of loss for a minority. Rich people like individual liberties, which are important. But more important is the freedom of the whole people to have agency. Democracy is popular sovereignty/popular will. - - Communities where no one has an advantage through the law over someone else is the best for a democratic state. When liberties of the individual are enjoyed by all, the individual interest, in a sense, becomes the social interest. Democratic principle: equal start, unequal finish. But people deserve that start. “SQUARE DEAL” The less efficient and independent the government is, it’s less likely that the government will overstep its bounds. The government must step in and discriminate on behalf of the average man and equality. Inaction is worse than responsible interference. The state should interfere to help those who can use their winnings for the benefit of society. Theodore Roosevelt, New Nationalism Analysis: - - Greater use of national government to solve national problems. Capital is secondary to labor. The marker of progress is the destruction of special privilege. “SQUARE DEAL” – change the rules of the game to work for equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good work. Corporate affairs need to be transparent and public. Government supervises. Government should control industrial “combinations” for the interest of the public. The absence of an active/effective state has seen concentrations of power. People who have a lot of money are justified if the gains are well used and represent a benefit to the community. Does not ask for centralization. Asks for a spirit of nationalism to work for the good of everyone as a whole. New Nationalism puts national need before personal need and regards the executive power as the guardian of the public welfare. Wilson, New Freedom Analysis: - Teddy Roosevelt’s proposal would create a heartless and impersonal system that threatened individuality. Government can’t be lodged in any special class or set of interests. We need the watchful interference of the government to regulate fair play. Freedom is more than being let alone. Break up big trusts, more state activity and regulations. Distrustful of the elites/Washington. The New Freedom sought to achieve this vision by attacking what Wilson called the Triple Wall of Privilege — the tariff, the banks, and the trusts. Likes the Jefferson agrarian educated utopia. Greater economic opportunity for all. By the extensive use of federal power to protect the common man, the New Freedom anticipated the centralized approaches of the New Deal 20 years later. Progressivism: Environmentalism (Teddy) and social justice. Social progressivism, the view that governmental practices ought to be adjusted as society evolves (Croly), forms the ideological basis for many American progressives. We need a square deal- government needs to give us equal opportunities (not guarantee actual equality though). More government intervention to work towards the benefit of the community. Community consciousness- put the people before the individual. New Deal Thought/Resistance FDR Speech at Oglethorpe - - Blames nation’s economic problems on lack of planning and foresight by government/business. We need greater controls and planning. “Bold, persistent experimentation.” Too many teachers/lawyers, not enough of their jobs- inefficient- plan better! We should be appalled by the haphazardness, danger, wastefulness of current industry. Sharpen it up with planning! Our basic problem is inefficiency. Can’t allow economic life to be controlled by a small group of individuals who just want wealth. Think more about the consumer than the producer. Government needs to step in. Can’t just let the market resolve itself. Commonwealth Club Speech - - Contrasting Hoover. Government should play innovative and active role in economy. Business has responsibilities to the community since “private economic power is a public trust”. Equality of opportunity. There’s no safety valve of a Western prairie- we are out of the expansion stage, now we need to shape up our industry. Government and business should work together to affect the economy. Government will regulate the businessmen, and will assist private initiative, only intervening directly when that has failed. Every man has a right to a comfortable living. Government should give him an avenue to success. First Inaugural Address - Action and bold leadership. We are all interdependent- modernization shows us this. We should be ready to sacrifice lives and property for the greater good. If Congress fails, Roosevelt is ready to ask for broad executive power to fight the national emergency. Asks blessing of God. Annual Message to Congress - Harsh indictment of businessmen who pursued their own interests at the expense of the public interest, and now we’re in a depression. Government is the representative and trustee of the public interest. Businessmen, however, employ autocracy towards labors, consumers, and public sentiment. We can’t let these men unrestrained or things will be worse—“enslavement of the public.” Four Freedoms - Democratic way of life is under attack across the world (this is 1941, remember). Nation’s hands shouldn’t be tied when the nation is in danger. More medical care, preservation of civil liberties, freedom from want, fear, worship, speech. Second Bill of Rights - Government power can act to make the reality of freedom possible. In a practical sense, you’re not really free until you can work or live on your wages. He does believe in individual rights—he is a liberal in this sense—but there’s more to it. He’s all for political freedoms, but the economy is another story—you’re gonna see some intervention. Tugwell - - Big planner. More on the left of FDR. Advocates a planned, centralized economy administered by Washington experts. The USSR is a model of how planning should go—we need to form and manage government-sponsored cartels. Order and reason over adventuresome competition. If profits are so important, why do we let people create surpluses and destroy future earnings and create unemployment? Need planning! Order! Profit persuades us to speculate, and that risky business is just not effective for the economy. Need a central group of experts planning economic life, as a consultative body. Planning for production means we plan for consumption too. Planning is rational, anti-conflict, all for publicly-defined and expertly identified aims. Wallace - Moderate planner. The state should bring about a spirit of common unity. Some limits should be placed on competition/individualism by the state. Need unanimity in both parties and among labor/agricultural leaders. Parties should stop bickering and actually help people. Disagrees with Tugwell- says that less rigid rules and the “clash” of free opinion will take us farther than the precise dogma of Communism. Not a big fan of planning. Democracy should be guided by greatest good for the greatest number. Government power should be used to advance harmony between clashing classes, etc. The extent to which we need to develop laws/restrictions to achieve harmony is the extent to which we should set limits on self-governing industry and agriculture. We need a pragmatic balance. Hoover - We need limited government, and a strict separation of powers, limited government interaction. Represents a nostalgia for old liberalism. Lippman - - - Plan during scarcity, but not abundance. Planning requires a degree of control that would lead to an oligarchy. It restricts freedom of choice. Fundamental characteristic of increasing quality of life is more disposable income. Outside times of scarcity, planning does not work. As productivity rises the variety of choice does too, and it’s not a simple calculation of supply and demand when things are shitty and you’re only planning for basics of survival, which is simple. People have a right to use their disposable income how they see fit. If we try and plan this, we must ration consumption, which brings conscription of labor, and before you know it we’re in a situation of control like a militarized state. Also, the planners would necessarily control the people—free will diminished. A productive economy is a more complex economy, the more invasive and restrictive the government will need to be to adequately plan to deal with this complexity. Songs: Woody Guthrie “The gamblin’ man is rich and the workin’ man is poor” –speaks to the sentiments of Tugwellopposes adventuresome, self-interested speculation. “Was a-farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor, My crops I lay into the banker's store” We need a living wage like Monsignor Ryan, FDR say. Rebels/1950s – Why is everything so damn quiet? Niebuhr, Children of Light and the Children of Darkness - - The optimism of democracy represents the illusion of a class that thought its own progress was the progress of the world. Bourgeois democracy put the individual over the community, but the community requires liberty too. Ideal democratic order seeks unity within the conditions of freedom and freedom within an orderly framework. Opposes Old/classical liberalism. We are naïve to think that natural law will guide human reason—we forget about greed and passions. We need a prudent, liberal understanding of human society that took the measure of every group’s self-interest and was chastened by a realistic understanding of the limits of power. Hartz, Concept of a Liberal Society - Lockean individualism has an irrational stranglehold on the American mind because we don’t have a feudal or aristocratic past to have a real socialist tradition. Criticizes the working class for going Gomper’s route—a little few concessions and it’s all okay. He notes a “disconcerted cesura” at the end of the 50s. Ideologies are over, workers are happy—it’s weirdly quiet. Bell, The End of Ideology - Who is going to be the engine of social change if not the worker? Notes a consensus on political issues— acceptance of Welfare state, decentralized power. The ideological age is over. Young intellectuals are unhappy because the middle way is for the old. Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City - Relationship between leaders and citizens is reciprocal. Leaders influence decisions of constituents, but their decisions are guided by the preferences of the constituents. We need the small group of intellectuals— they diffuse knowledge and make decisions. Politics are open to anyone. If not for elections and competing parties, the sharing of common values and goals between members of each party would decline. He’s against planning—says that its more based on hunch guesswork and impulse than scientific predictions. Survival of leaders and subleaders depends on their reciprocal relationship, one giving things to the other. Minority control through leaders isn’t inconsistent with popular control over leaders through elections. Leaders lead and are also led. You can make a difference! Learned Hand, A Plea for the Freedom of Dissent Human nature is malleable. In a universe we don’t understand we turn to people who say they’ve found a path out of the thickets. It is only by trial and error that we’ve evolved. Defends dissent and nonconformity. We need dissent to progress, we can’t just sit around content. We need to engage in the labor of thought—we think things are good but they can be better—we think we see clearly but really we don’t- we need critical thought to see clearer. Do we think the way things are now are eternal truths, or are they just the best so far and should we keep looking for better? Conservatism/Anti-Communism William F. Buckley, God and Man at Yale - Yale has an obligation to teach values of religion and free-market individualism, not the atheist, socialist superstitions of academic freedom. What kind of hypocrisy is it when the institution patroned by Christians adheres itself to produce atheistic socialists? Whittaker Chambers, Witness - Cold war as a deadly struggle between empty materialism of communism and spiritual fulfillment of Godgiven freedom. At Alger Hiss’ trial, it was also a trial of good vs evil. Communism’s heart is that it is necessary to change the world—Man without God. Man displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. God or Man, Soul or Mind, Freedom or Communism. But knowledge and adherence to God is what gives nations character and meaning. Without it they die. Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative Calls for a return of power to state and local governments and more individual freedom. The liberal approach isn’t working. The people want a return to Conservative principles. Conservatives’ failure is a failure to demonstrate their relevance. Conservatism holds true perennially- it’s the wisdom of experience and the past. Conservatives feel the need to apologize for some reason, to qualify their conservatism. We can’t think how the liberals do—in terms of a “common man”. Whitewashing people as part of an undifferentiated mass is pretty much the ultimate form of slavery. The government, in doing whatever needs to be done, also implicitly gets to decide what those needs are. This flies in the face of the Constitution, which is an instrument to limit the government. Government is usually the chief thing thwarting man’s liberty. Reveres Constitution. Contrasts Donnelly. Speaks for the people against the elites in government. Radical Stirrings C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite The trifecta of government, business, and military runs this country. These groups have become enlarged, administrative, and centralized its decision-making power. The economy is dominated by a few corporations who hold the keys to economic decisions. Politics are held by an executive establishment who enters into every nook and cranny of the social sphere. Men of power in small groups make momentous decisions. Opposes Dahl, who says you can make a difference. Mills says nah, not under this interlocking directorate. Mills, Letter to the New Left Thinkers are stuck in a labor metaphysic. Change can come from the young intelligentsia. Students are on deck. Liberals are the problem. Teen Rebellion Ginsburg’s “Howl” The celebration of counter culture movement. The best minds of the 50s are destroyed by madness. This madness came in different forms. Those are scholars, best mind, and best generation. This madness came as a counterculture. Counter culture is not their choice, it is their compulsion. They suffered from hysteria when the dreams are postponed continuously. For Ginsberg, Moloch is associated with war, government, capitalism, and mainstream culture. Moloch is an inhuman monster that kills youth and love, the drug users, dropouts, bums, travelers, political dissidents, poets- the “best minds”. Mailer, “The White Negro” Culturally, the youth is becoming black. Sex, trouble with the law, freeform music. White youth culture has become about identifying with the working class and negroes. Believes there’s a cultural marriage happening, where black culture through film, music, culture, is becoming pop culture. As Baldwin says, African Americans see life as it is because they’ve been forced to. Mailer takes this existentially—black people are more in touch with life, have more clarity—they know how to live in the moment and are cultural heroes for this. Songs Image of the rebel- slick leather jacket, motorcycle, danger, rebelliousness, individual authority, exposed to the elements, brave, tough. “He told me he was bad, but I knew he was sad. That’s why I fell for the leader of the pack.” Civil Rights/Black Power Baldwin - Cooperation with whites and blacks. Inform white America of its ignorance. Prophesizes a “fire next time” if these issues aren’t addressed. Americans love violence but they don’t respect it with black people because it threatens them. Christians deeply implicated in slavery. Starts to see the church as a distraction, telling people they’ll be saved, makes people content with life as is—be humble, this is your fate. It’s implicitly white, and a barrier to change. - - Doesn’t like Islam either. Muhammad offers a history in which black people were the majority, the kings, a glorious factual origin story to reclaim identity. Baldwin doesn’t like this either, cuz religion to him is a power game. It’s just as fallacious to say god is black as it is to say god is white. Basically Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam is just the black version of Christianity, with the same things wrong. Baldwin isn’t defined by his Christian slave name, yet he keeps it—we can’t avoid or rewrite history. To an extent, everyone has to accept who they are and their past. We need to accept that the Negro has been formed by this nation. He inverts Du Bois- the problem isn’t blacks, it’s whites. The problem is that they see us as a problem, which is problematic. MLK Nonviolent, direct action seeks to win friendship and understanding. Keep love at the center of our lives. Cooperation with whites- “we can’t walk alone.” We share this country, our fates are tied up inextricably in this. White power structure has left us with no other choice. Violence may be precipitated by what we do, but we can’t be urged to stop trying to gain our constitutional rights because of it. There won’t be peace until we have it. Unjust laws aren’t laws. Don’t defy the law when you must break it, but do it lovingly to arouse the conscience of the community. If moderation means being restrained and using reason, he’s all for it. But we can’t just wait in this shitty status quo. Time won’t solve this. Action will. Human progress comes through the efforts of man. The white moderate is the great stumbling block for Negro freedom. He’s more devoted to order than justice. SNCC Follow religious ideals of nonviolence. Let’s appeal to white conscience. Rustin Build alliances in the dem party, make friends, get power, and then make change. The rise of Jim Crow has seen rise of a de-facto segregation in schools and the workplace. Civil rights isn’t really at stake, so much as social and economic conditions. Race riots are really class antagonisms. Can’t let the market run itself, because it isn’t always fair. Civil rights is really a broader social movement. It’s not just about giving opportunity, it’s about actually achieving equality. Malcom X, The Ballot or the Bullet It’s either one or the other. We’re faced with a government conspiracy that’s lobbying to keep us from getting our civil and economic rights. We are criminals, but we’re fighting segregation, so the law is on our side so you’re justified. I’ll be nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with me. But if that dog comes at you, kill it. Black Nationalism means that black man should control the politics in his community, and no more. We need to control our economy, remove vices of drugs and alcohol. Black people need to reevaluate themselves. You can’t change the white man’s mind. America’s conscience is bankrupt. Blacks need to develop unity and solidarity. Doesn’t believe in any kind of integration. Separate black communities. Carmichael, Toward Black Liberation - The Negro community has traditionally been subservient to the white community. Racist assumptions of white superiority are deeply ingrained in the fabric of our institutions/subconscious. Integration implies that there’s nothing of value in the black community so the best thing to do is siphon off the best Negroes to middle class white society. Do we really just want to say that integration is just the loosening of barriers to entry into the white sphere? Is this really what integration is about? If we’re gonna integrate, we need to preserve the racial and cultural personality of blacks. We need to retain our African identities. Civil Rights Movements: On the one hand we have the SNCC and MLK, saying we need to appeal to the white conscience, defy laws in order to expose their unjustness and arouse the conscience of the community. Malcom X disagrees—the white conscience doesn’t exist. Stokey really wants blacks to form their own identity, and destroy the symbols of white superiority and limitations on the Negro community before integrating. New Left SDS’s Port Huron Statement - - Reduce dominance of economic institutions and materialism of American culture by increasing democratic participation and individual responsibility. The golden age was really the decline of an era. We need a commitment to social experimentation to search for truly democratic alternatives to the present disparities of equality and wealth. Our liberal/socialist predecessors had vision without program, and we have the inverse of that problem. All around us there is method, but behind it, there’s no ideology. To be idealistic is to be deluded or apocalyptic in today’s society. Our skills and science are purchased by the arms race- we don’t have ideology anymore. We don’t want to be machines built for slots in the corporate world, we want meaning. Politics needs to bring people into the community. Work should be educative, creative, and dignifying, not mechanical. Institutions that stifle dissent should be abolished. Corporations should be publicly responsible. Resource allocation should be based on social needs. Get rid of squalor and poverty. The New Left should be composed of young people, liberals and socialists. We need vision and planning in campus and community. We need controversy, we need dissent to spark an awakening of the community. “This chrome-plated consumer’s paradise” creates a society of automated contentment. Universities are turning out students with all their edges that make them different/creative. Savio “An End to History” - Frustrated with large, bureaucratic universities and institutions. Equates civil rights movement with the students’ movement. Both are about the right to participate as citizens in a democratic society. Free speech is restricted. New Left: Sprang up in the early 1960s as a reaction to the timidity of liberalism on racial equality, the Vietnam War, and the thoroughly discredited and powerless "Old Left". We need young people to bring radical change and escape this production complex we’re in. We need ideology, we need vision, we need participatory democracy, we need community. Yippies/Hippies/Counterculture Rubin Challenges young people to rebel against the hierarchy. Don’t trust anyone who is intellectually old. The change we need is to live differently, not change politics like the New Left thinks is the answer. Rise up against capitalist oppressors- identifies with the world’s revolutionaries like Castro. Opposes the moralism and structure of the New Left and their 5 step plan to liberate society, which he sees as really contradictory- the New Left can’t come to terms with its own power desires. We don’t groove with Christianity- we want heaven now! We are dropping out-getting our heads straight. Becoming the new niggers. The country is over organized. Classrooms should be in circles, not a hierarchical structure. Hoffman Beware of structures, beware of rules. Identifies with revolutionary Castro. Politics are the way you live life. Differs from the New Left- is a fan of leisure, of “wastefulness”. Corporate Liberalism is the enemy. At least the Conservatives are honest about who they are, not liberals who say they are for freedom but try and dominate my whole life. They don’t really have a “goal” –the goal is to be a mystery, the boundaries are your own. Cops are our enemies- not when they’re naked, but when they play the role. It’s all performative. Songs Bob Dylan: You used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat Ain't it hard when you discovered that He really wasn't where it's at After he took from you everything he could steal Targeting the corrupt liberal institutions At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used Go to him he calls you, you can't refuse Calling for revolution Joan Didion - Didion rejected, but found that she could not ignore, the negative aspects of the drug culture associated with the anti-Establishment movements that grew out of the Beat Generation. Because it was threatening California’s frontier traditions of responsible self-reliance, she decided to put aside her preference for privacy and describe the disorder. She discovered that in many ways the so-called counterculture mirrored the shallowness of the Establishment against which it purported to take its stand. The - dropouts shared the same self-centeredness, indifference, and casual relationships that marked large corporations. She disapproves of some of the situations she encounters, such as the teenagers who ran away from home because their parents did not approve of their style of dress and their choice of friendships. Shes watching things fall apart. The 60s are kinda over. For these ruanways, their past doesn’t matter and their future is uncertain- they’re just in limbo. This isn’t good. Dark side of the counterculture. Liberation or limbo? Is this really freedom? The doors can barely make a decision cuz no one wants to hold anyone to commit. It’s just a huge disorder. Susan Sontag - No need to be upset if the kids don’t pay the old dissenter-gods obedience. Most people don’t think things are that bad, which is why they distaste the counterculture. But when are kids going to realize that things are never going to be any different, except probably worse? The white race is the cancer of history, eradicating peoples, upsetting the balance of the planet. Sees some hope in Eastern spirituality and tendencies. Young people need to reject the stale truths of their sad elders. Conservatism (1960s) Young Americans for Freedom - Commitment to limited government and economic freedom. Government is to protect freedoms and ensure justice. Constitution is the best way to give agency to and set limits for government. No government interference in the economy. Milton Friedman - - - - Unless we have economic freedoms, we won’t have civil liberties. With production under the control of the government, it is nearly impossible for real dissent and exchange of ideas to exist. Get government out of the economy. Government should enforce law and order and property rights, act against technical monopolies and diminish negative "neighborhood effects." The government should have control over money. The Fed should plan to affect the economy. The doctrine of "corporate social responsibility”, that they should focus on not just profit but with the community in mind, is highly subversive to the capitalist system and can only lead towards totalitarianism. Social Security is unfair, doesn’t work as well as people think. Podhoretz My Negro Problem and Ours - He is doing what Baldwin tells us to do—have an honest conversation about race with yourself. Blacks are better athletes, tougher—yet I also hated them. How could they be worse off than us? Yet I believed my sister when she said they were. Integration was not going to work. Black nationalists—who were mounting an increasingly influential challenge to the integrationists—took offense at my slighting references to the history and culture of their - - people as nothing more that a "stigma." And Jews were offended by my willingness to entertain the possibility that the survival of the Jewish people might not have been worth the suffering it had entailed. I cannot believe that we hated each other back there in Brooklyn because they thought of us as jailers and we felt guilty toward them. Whites hate blacks because they project what he fears in himself onto them. Blacks hate whites because the white man refuses to look at him. In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, I was as faceless to the Negroes as they were to me, and if they hated me because I never looked at them, I must also have hated them for never looking at me. descriptions were very shocking to most white liberals. In their eyes Negroes were all long-suffering and noble victims of the kind who had become familiar through the struggles of the civil rights movement in the South Merle Haggard Real Americans respect the college dean, cut their hair, and work hard. If you don't love it, leave it: Let this song I'm singin' be a warnin'. If you're runnin' down my country, man, You're walkin' on the fightin' side of me. We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee We don't take our trips on LSD We don't burn our draft cards down on Main Street We like livin' right, and bein' free We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse
