Saturday, November 19, 2011
Side Tracks
You might ask why some conservative blogger would post this song. Trying to score brownies from the cool people? Nope. It's a damn good song. But the message! It condemns the stuffy organized world and how it sucks the creativity, spirit and expression out of life, and only when one becomes a liberal do they achieve a kind of freedom. There may be a little truth in that for some people, but all one has to do is witness the collapsing EU and a debris trail of socialist experiments before it to know that liberalism doesn't always work so well in all endeavors. There's a place for the logical and cynical, and a place for liberals. That's what makes the world turn.
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4 comments:
It is a great song.
I never have assumed the translation of the word liberal, in this case, means the evolved definition that it has become today.
Open-minded and generous does not describe these people we now know as liberals. Nor does the concept of individual economic freedom mean much in their case. The term liberal, here, translates more like the Webster definitions I cite than any hijacked meaning that has been assigned to it by today's progressive socialists. In fact, the founding fathers were called liberal and radical, and they were in the real sense. What kind of colony had ever had the audacity to throw its crown away before this?
In the case of this song, to define the word liberal as one who believes in government control of anything, would be completely antithetical to the theme of the song. There is a way to be all of these things he mentions, in the right measure of each, with no one description taking more authority over the other. It's called being a well-balanced individual. To me, logic and reason are not at odds with faith, hope, and charity.
When I first heard this one some 30 years ago, it was a refreshing tune that liberated the spirit of the listener, it did not bind. I still see it this way, today.
Excellent choice, Supertramp is still my favorite band of all time.
My liberal side agrees, but my cynical side still says the song is a protest against the "machine" that creates "responsible" adults, which strips away the child-like aura of how we once saw the world.
There's a version on You Tube where a conservatively wrapped school marm begins taking her clothes off and becoming "liberated", not a "vegetable", which is kind of how I see the song.
From my viewpoint most people in the arts tend to be liberal, whereas certain other professions require more 'logic'. I'd agree that none of us are 100 percent one or the other but at the end of the day our internal compasses tend to lead us one way or the other. Which is fine. But the sides always seem to be at odds with each other.
//My liberal side agrees, but my cynical side still says the song is a protest against the "machine" that creates "responsible" adults, which strips away the child-like aura of how we once saw the world. //
The machine at the time was Jimmy Carter. He did much to cause many people to become disillusioned and did much to strip away my desire for government. He was my commander in chief when I was in the military, he was the reason the military had such a morale problem at that time, and one of the reasons I had no interest in making it a career.
I was in high school at the time it came out and don't recall anyone really commenting about the lyrics, it's just something I've assumed over the years. Music hits different people different ways, no doubt.
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