Asymmetric Music

As usual, Powerline does the blogosphere a service by providing an alternative to the adulatory coverage of Pete Seeger's 90th birtday. It's not like Powerline is ruining the appreciation of good music by considering Seeger's politics: a great deal of Seeger's appeal is his politics.

And what were his politics up until a few years ago, when it was irrelevant: Seeger maintained faithful allegiance to the the second most murderous political group in history (China's holding at #1), reminding us that:

1. For many on the left, feelings trump reality, "Seeger sang about loving each other."

2. Of course, Nazi-Soviet hypocrisy. A Nazi folk singer probably wouldn't have won the Medal of Honor for art (how ironic that he received his award in a building named after JFK who hated Communism and was killed by a Communist) nor gotten a PBS special.

3. Many on the left prefer style over substance. Consider the Che T-shirts, the long say-nothing speeches of President Obama, that they seem much more likely to form opinions based on art.

4. One can admire a brave, principled Communist, sort of, but Seeger refused to say whether he was Communist and withdrew an album because his Soviet puppet masters told him to.

5. In looking for music for this post, I came across this song, called, "What Did You Learn in School?" Well, Pete Seeger, Communist, must be happy that kids today are pretty much learning the leftist ideas he espoused all of his life. The most popular history text on campus is People's History by Communist sympathizer Howard Zinn. Communist libel like the book Obama accepted from Chavez, Open Veins of Latin America
is popular in college as well. Even in my high school, I noticed that Mother Jones graced the magazine rack in the library. No issues of the National Review or Weekly Standard were there to contest it.

Magazine rack at Huntington Park High School.

Here's an album. Please don't reward the capitalist pigs who run the record companies by paying for it:

The Essential Pete Seeger

A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) by Howard Zinn

The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano