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July 17, 2010
What's an anti-establishment, '60s icon to do? Join the GOP
I've often wondered how folks who fashion themselves freedom-loving, anti-establishment types reconcile themselves to a liberal Democratic Party and president who seem ever more interested in micromanaging every aspect of our lives.
If folksinger Arlo Guthrie is any indication, they become Republicans.
Novelist, editor, critic and former hippie John Harding knows where Arlo's coming from.
When singer Arlo Guthrie appeared at the Columbia Festival of the Arts last month, he steered clear of politics. So what he told Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post came like a bolt from the blue: He’s now a registered Republican.
Hey, this is Arlo Guthrie we’re talking about — son of famed Dust Bowl protest singer Woody Guthrie and himself a long-haired icon of the draft-dodging ’60s . … “Flying into Los Angeles, bringing in a couple of keys.” You know? That Arlo Guthrie … a reconstituted conservative?
[...]
Arlo and I are about the same age, and while no one asked me to sing at Woodstock, I probably would have. I made a lot of odd lifestyle choices in those days. To me and my friends, “grass roots” meant something other than a populist uprising.
Still, we were aghast at the idea of Big Brother, and were against most state intrusions into private lives. When I saw how the government was harassing and intimidating students against the Vietnam war, I threw myself into George McGovern’s presidential campaign because his platform included stopping the draft and reining in an out-of-control central government.
Arlo Guthrie’s famous anthem about “The Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” was nothing if not a parable about private citizens standing up against the hydra-headed authority of an overzealous power structure.
It’s not hard to understand Arlo gravitating toward the only party now paying lip service to a limited Federal government. That’s the GOP.
Of course, as time has passed, neither party has been too mindful of its primary mission, which is to look out for our interests. NAFTA? No threat there to American jobs. The border? Good as sealed. A Social Security lock box? No one’s going to rob that baby.
These days, we’re at the mercy of legislators who sign bills without reading them, rack up trillion dollar debts without explanation, and bet our children’s future on impractical energy fixes and economic theories still not proven to work in the real world.
It’s no wonder that everyday people rose up and began mailing empty tea bags to their elected officials— a reminder of the tea tax rebellion that motivated our nation’s founders. We’ve learned that King George can be a nanny as well as a bully, and where is the counterculture ready to oppose that more benign tyranny?
I’m wondering if Arlo hasn’t also been thinking, like me, that these tea party folks could be the hippies of today. They have no leaders, no lobbyists in Washington, no financial backers telling them what to do next.
But they do have powerful media critics. The mainstream newspapers and news outlets have spent a lot of time and energy trying to demonize and marginalize the tea party movement.
I’m sure Arlo remembers how the establishment treated hippies in the 1960s, when even tossing Frisbees in the park was suddenly deemed a subversive activity.
Hippies were mocked as outcasts by late night comedians then, too. They were called rowdy and disrespectful and ill-groomed. Rather than rebut the ideas of a peace activist like Joan Baez, she was rechristened “Phony Joanie” in the funny pages of the so-called “straight” press.
Those tactics would be familiar to anyone who has bothered to meet the real Sarah Palin.
All I’m saying is, don’t be surprised if Arlo Guthrie shows up at a tea party rally some day. I know he’ll agree to sing to the crowd, and when he does, I can’t think of a better choice for him to sing than a little ditty his daddy wrote called “This Land Is Your Land.”
If the GOP can keep concentrate on limited government as its core philosophy, I suspect more and more people who thought of themselves as lifelong Democrats might consider switching parties in order to keep government -- and know-nothing, busybody bureaucrats -- out of our homes, our lives, and our pockets.
Here's the most interesting thing about this story: I suspect that Arlo Guthrie is a more principled conservative than Sen. Lindsay Graham or "Maverick" John McCain.
Posted by Mike Lief at July 17, 2010 10:32 AM
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Comments
I like your insights. What really is a Republican anyway? Is George Bush a Republican? He hit the panic button with light speed and rushed us into this fiscal stimulus nonsense. Obama is for more stimulus than dumb George but they march to the beat of the same drum.
Posted by: Arthur at July 18, 2010 10:56 AM
"What really is a Republican anyway?"
Good question. I suppose the most honest and accurate answer is, "Someone who is somewhat less profligate and marginally less awful on issues that matter to fiscal conservatives than the Democratic nominee ... but not much better."
I have friends that are constantly throwing Bush in my face -- no, George Bush -- as if I'm going to defend his free-spending, big government ways.
I am first and foremost a small-government, first-principles voter. There's a small subset -- a VERY small subset -- of the GOP that seems to at least pay lip service to those goals; I'm not aware of any portion of the Democratic Party that believes in or supports that philosophy.
Bottom line, 'tho: I'm a conservative, which means I have no party.
Posted by: Mike Lief at July 18, 2010 11:08 AM