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Sunday, May 28, 2006

Is "Won't Get Fooled Again" conservative?

Pete Townshend responds to the selection of "Won't Get Fooled Again" as the number 1 conservative rock song.
The song was meant to let politicians and revolutionaries alike know that what lay in the centre of my life was not for sale, and could not be co-opted into any obvious cause... I am just a song-writer.... Won't Get Fooled Again - then - was a song that pleaded '….leave me alone with my family to live my life, so I can work for change in my own way….'.
A lot of conservatives will say that's precisely what is conservative.

Related post: "The 50 greatest conservative rock songs."

UPDATE: Stephen Bainbridge agrees with my statement about "precisely what is conservative" and says:
[N]ote (1) the emphasis on there being an aspect of life which is not for sale, which echoes Edmund Burke's references to "the unbought grace of life," and (2) the desire to be left alone by both politicians and revolutionaries, so as to work for change individually, which echoes Burke's references to the "little platoons" of society, of which the family is first and foremost.

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