Where have all the protest songs gone?

Twl,
You may want to recheck your numbers. The Great Society programs barely got off the ground before the majority of the funding began to be siphoned off to finance the war in Viet Nam. In any case, total funding for all of Johnson's "Great Society" programs was far less than that which was spent on the war effort.

I suspect that you, just as I am, are highly critical of the big, expensive social welfare programs common to European countries. What a lot of people do not realize is that right here in the good ole' US of A, we have a social welfare program that is bigger, and far more expensive than any in Europe. It is called prison.

The number of people incarcerated for drug offences in the US is now greater than what the total prison population of the US was just 15 years ago.

But at least we won the "War on Drugs", by golly.

I live right next to the notorious Cabrini-Green housing project, so I get to see the effects of this social policy first hand. The young men who are imprisoned often leave single mothers behind, to raise their children in poverty. By the time their boys are eleven or twelve, their young mothers can no longer control them. These adolescents get into petty crime, dealing, gangbanging, and killing each other.

Oh well, I suppose we just have to build more prisons.

good one rosstaman!

people are dying all around
time i looked away
thanks to prisons i'm much obliged
they're such a pleasent stay
but now it's time for me to go
the bombs need to be on there way
we need the oil so we'll block out the pain
but it's headin your way

ah, sometimes i grow so tired
but i know there's one thing i've got to do
drop the bombs
and now's the time the time is now
hear them explode
goin round the world to find the oil
drop the bombs
nows the time the time is now
hear the crys
gonna find the oil so i can fill my suv
drop the bombs

Hi Bruce. I have nothing against compassion and I think it is an admirable trait. I have some of it myself. I think that compassion should have a place in everyone's life.

Perhaps I am over-sensitive about compassion being used as a lever to do what I mentioned in my previous post. As long as compassion remains compassion, and doesn't force me to pay for programs I don't agree with, at the point of a gun, then I can go along with it fine. That's why I said that it should be voluntary. I would never seek to limit others from doing what their hearts lead them to do. Taxing everyone to pay for it, is where I draw the line.

Tweakgeek, I totally agree with you about the prison thing. It is a big business, and a rotten form of government control. If we had stayed with common law, and limited the punishments to 2x restitution of the injured party, then we would be alot better off. Violent crimes should be met with violent punishments.

As far as the comparison of the Great Society vs the Vietnam war, the Vietnam war ended. Last time I checked, the Great Society was still spending over the limit every day for the last 38 years. And the "New Deal", for the last 70. There is no amount of money spending that can make everything equal. People are not equal in skills and capabilities and ambition. Taking the fruits from the capable worker, and giving to others is merely squashing the incentive to work, and the money that is given to the "underpriveleged" through "programs" is significantly used up by administrative expense, and the remainder is squandered on lottery tickets and Ripple anyway. I see this every day, and so do you, and everyone else. Free money is keeping these people down. If they had to go out and do something, or starve, you'd see them do it pretty quick. Free handouts destroy self-esteem, and discourage productive activity. Work and success increases self-esteem, and improves quality of life for all.

I didn't like the Vietnam war, and I know what it was all about too. But pointing to it, to distract attention from the other issue of never-ending absurd spending on destructive programs masquerading as "assistance", is not addressing the issue. I'll agree that the Vietnam war was a massive fraud and poor direction for our country to engage in, just as the Great Society was, and is.

I would love to see the old classic protest songs be played today, and bring someideas of change to what is happening today too. We are right now being subjected to another massive fraud that is going to put all of us into a very bad position in a very permanent way.

"Has the music arts become so safe and sterile and corporate that no one can hear their still small voice and raise it".
I think the whole bloody media is safe, sterile and dumbed down to the lowest level. Media consolidation and ownership by the likes of GE is destroying democracy in the US.