Posted on 07/30/2009 4:48:44 PM PDT by chessplayer
I bet you thought rock and rollers in the '60s were all left-wing radicals advocating the violent takeover of America in order to replace our style of government with communism.
According to Ralph Benko, a conservative human rights advocate, you couldn't be more wrong:
[T]he evidence is that the greatest musicians of the golden age of Rock (to whose work we’re all still listening since nothing better has come along) are, where it counts the most, deeply conservative.
Taking this further, Benko believes the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who may have stopped America from installing a Marxist dictatorship (h/t Paul Chesser):
With the Cultural Revolution in full cry in China, and French students throwing Molotov cocktails in Paris (as in the image above, which, full disclosure, is of anarchist rioting after the Sarkozy election, not from the 60s), there was a great deal of agitation among students in the US in opposition to the Vietnam war, the draft, and in favor of civil rights and the sexual revolution. There was also a lot of passion for Marxist thought.
We’ll never know exactly how close America came to installing a Marxist dictatorship. But the failure to do so certainly wasn’t from any lack of effort by the self-avowed Marxist/Leninist student leaders.
Who stopped them?
The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. That’s who.
Some examples?
The most explicit pull on the “emergency chord” was The Beatles “Revolution,” from The White Album (1968) and the flip side to their mega-classic “Hey Jude” which guaranteed lots of airplay. Some lines:
You tell me that it’s evolution Well, you know We all want to change the world But when you talk about destruction Don’t you know that you can count me out
You ask me for a contribution Well, you know We’re doing what we can But when you want money for people with minds that hate All I can tell is brother you have to wait
You tell me it’s the institution Well, you know You better free you mind instead But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Nobody was hipper than John Lennon. If Lennon ruled out Lenin … revolution was officially un-hip.
Read on for more.
>>I’m constantly amazed at how angry some freepers are about things that they shouldn’t be taking so personally.<<
And where exactly did I take it personally?
All I’m saying is that in 50 years, the “Genius” that is the Beatles will be GREATLY diminished.
Rudy Vallee was a genius in his time too.
As was Bing Crosby
As was Frank Sinatra.
or Rogers and Hamerstein.
Let’s be serious here.
Every generation has a “Genius” In the big picture, they are influential or popular but not genius. Including the Beatles.
Nothing wrong with that, I was only remarking on the demographics of the first 50 years of their success. I never commented on their music or genius.
That’s a cheeky argument. I’ve also heard that because there are no pictures of hippies spitting on soldiers, nor references to actual events in MSM news stories, that it never happened.
Universities of the 1960s varied considerably on the political spectrum, but there was already infiltration by some extreme radical leftists. While not yet common, many schools had “radical magnet” professors, sought out by radical students.
There are somewhat easy to look up these days, because they seldom cared much for their official duties, and instead sought to stir up trouble, found radical organizations, and otherwise be pesky.
Interesting post. The boomers were moving the culture in the sixties - and it might have made a difference...
Well, if you never saw it and I never saw it why are you claiming such specific acts and words?
” The Beatles suck. “
You lost all credibility with all of us who know anything about rock music , and music in general .
” They killed American Rock and Roll. “
Who bought the records ; and all the other paraphenalia that was sold ...AMERICANS .
” Nothing they did measured up to the talent coming out of Memphis and the American blending of county, blues, and pop”
Comparing a waste of time . The Beatles came along at the right time with the right sound and looks . And they had the songwriting abilities to back up the hype .
” the Monkeys “ ?
Now THEY were a joke .
Teenage girls and teenage boys who tended liberal or Marxist.
Because I knew conservative professors who taught then, and they attested to it. The subject came up about other radical professors when discussing Morris Starsky at Arizona State:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Starsky
There were several such agitators in the California universities as well, and they were not bashful about using students as their pawns.
But this leads to the question, why are you defending such scoundrels? Though you did not personally experience their venom is certainly no evidence that others did not.
Where did they get the money ?
I know where I got mine ...my AMERICAN parents ! And I got a birth certificate , too !
By the way don't start lying about me because you made some stuff up, I'm not defending anyone, you posted something that you were trying to pass off as actual history and I was there and never saw it and never heard of those actions, did you? If you want to talk about leftist professors fine but don't start making up the details as though they were history.
Though the odds were quite small of being drafted, being sent to Vietnam, and dying, students were threatened that if they *didn’t* protest against the war, their professors would fail them, they would lose their draft deferment, be drafted, sent to Vietnam, and die.
Same as all other liberals and Marxists. They spend someone else's money.
To back up your assertion a friend of mine told me about a summer camp for math students one of his sons attended about fifteen years ago. His son would have been about seventeen or eighteen at the time. They took a poll at the camp and asked these math whizzes who their favorite musicians were. The top poll answer was, you guessed it, The Beatles.
OK , you win . Every kid who ever bought a Beatles or Rolling Stones record was a liberal or Marxist . Got it .
“Maybe we should look at the lyrics of “Imagine” before we make Lennon a conservative.”
Not trying to imply he was a conservative. I think he disdained US style capitalism. But I think he also disdained communism.
You’re probably the only one who took that book literally!!
“Back In The USSR” was a take off on the Beach Boys sound....also, “tongue in cheek”
“Teenage girls and teenage boys who tended liberal or Marxist. “
I was a Goldwater Republican as a teenager in 1964.......
Well good for them.
Still doesn’t make him great. Just makes him popular in the underground.
>>Nothing wrong with that, I was only remarking on the demographics of the first 50 years of their success. I never commented on their music or genius.<<
Then why are you answering me with your chart? I was.
Popularity comes and goes. You grabbed a chart with four artists, no reference and no timeline. Fine, but it really has nothing to do with the conversation.
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