The song was written in 1971 by Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, a long-time resident of Slidell, Louisiana.

Live 04/16/83 in Hamburg, Germany: Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (guitar/vocals), Homer Brown (tenorsax), Bill Samuell (tenorsax), Joe Sunseri (baritonesax), Craig Wroten (piano), Miles Wright (bass), Robert Shipley (drums).

HT Dick Clark for bringing this to my attention.

~*~

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

From Wired.com comes news of the US Army’s latest spy mobile — a high altitude, long-duration flight, combat airship, ominously nicknamed “The Unblinking Eye.” This sweet ride and its two sister blimps will cost taxpayers upwards of half a billion dollars. The 5-year contract calls for mere $517 million, and we all know military contractors never experience cost overruns.

I love Noah Shachtman’s analysis of the propagandistic publicity poster by Northrop Grumman, the maker of the Army’s latest war toy:

God smiles when the Army spends a half-billion dollars on spy blimps the size of a football field. I believe that’s the message Northrop Grumman is trying to convey in this illustration. . .

The first airship is supposed to be inflated around 10 months from now. Eight months later, the Army hopes to have the first LEMV flying over Afghanistan. On that day, the clouds will part, the sun will shine, and the cherubs will sing as the unblinking eye begins looking for Taliban.

God bless America indeed.

The Unblinking Eyes of Sauron are intended for use over foreign soil. But with the increasing militarization of US borders and police, I wonder how long until they or their successors are deployed over our own heads? looking for brown-skinned interlopers, pot growers, and terrorists under every rock.

I’m reminded of a couple of pieces by heavy metal bands, though these work just as well for spy satellites. The first is a creepy intro, “An Eye Is Upon You,” by Powerman 5000 for their album Tonight the Stars Revolt! And the second is “Electric Eye” by one of my favorite bands, Judas Priest (their compilation album Metal Works is a good place to start).

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

There’s a new anti-war rock/hip-hop song hitting the air waves lately. It is called White Flag Warrior, from the album Survival Story, by Flobots and featuring Tim McIlrath of the punk rock band Rise Against. It’s a catchy tune with good lyrics, melding both rock and hip hop elements. The song has a definite non-violent resistance ring to it. The oft repeated line that “we’d rather make our children martyrs than murderers” reminds me of the Socratic position that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it — truly libertarian sentiments.

Music video and lyrics below:

Lyrics

We request to negotiate
We come to you unarmed
We desire to communicate
You cannot do us harm

They want sacrifice
They hatch schemes and ask me to follow their path to the afterlife

I’ve got an appetite
For nice things and pipe dreams that my enemies could be blasted by

New metaphors
View that are better for you can’t survive if I’m your competitor

Rise together or fight separate wars
I pray I’m never forced to be a predator

Spectres spectate
We wont last
They glad to hate
When gladiators
Breathe their last
Scream en masse
When the dreams do clash
Like the swords in the wars
Let me bleed on that
But they feed on that
Say we need strong backs
Call us weak
If we don’t redeem contracts
But the feast wont last
When this beast attacks
The sons and the fathers
Will be free at last

This is love this is not treason

They see sharks in the estuary
They claim the arc’s Bartholomew’s
They say war is necessary
But we say war is child abuse

We’d rather make our children martyrs than murderers
We’d rather make our children White Flag Warriors

Core-to-core
Were the ones
We’ve been waiting for
We hold steady
Steadier than stevedores
Not tevias or matadors
On matters of what came before
Forgive the debts
To settle scores
Test the mettle
Either ore
Whats your plan got to do with me
If the bell tolls let freedom ring
And find new ways if we must be King
Instead of leading the young to our suffering

We pass testaments down scream back at heaven
For testing us like Wednesdays at eleven
Wanna recruit and train us to act evilly?
Save it for the shooting range and smack DVDs
Won’t study war no more this millennium
It’s never again to me or anyone
So think harder when you refer to us
Rather make our children martyrs than murderers

They shell dwellings to quell the shelling
They lift taboos to seduce the cowards
They say we’re too yellow-bellied
But we say we’re the new superpower

We seek waivers to not be liable
We claim to speak for a higher truth
We stand opposed to the homicidal
We tell you you’re fireproof

***

Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

One of my favorite bands. A new video for their 1984 song, “2 Minutes to Midnight.” Check out the Wikipedia article on the song. Among other things it will help explain the title.

YES!!! Metallica AND philosophy. My favorite band is finally getting recognition in philosophical circles.

Check out the new book in the Philosophy and Pop Culture series: Metallica and Philosophy: A Crash Course in Brain Surgery.

Here’s a sneak peek at one of the essays it contains: “Through the Mists of Madness: Metallica’s Message of Nonconformity, Individuality, and Truth” by Thomas Nys. Hat tip to Aeon Skoble at Liberty & Power for the heads up. I too wish I had written this article! (For one thing, I wouldn’t have written from a purely utilitarian perspective.)

Anthony Gregory has a less serious essay on the parallel “Rise and Decline of Metallica and American Liberty.” We can argue whether Metallica has sold out and whether their latest album sucked (personally I like just about every Metallica song except, unfortunately, the latest album), but lets focus on the good stuff instead – like the above mentioned article on Metallica and philosophy.

By Metallica (from the Black album 1991). This is, I think, a song easily applicable to the State and its faithful supporters and apologists.

The God That Failed

Pride you took
Pride you feel
Pride that you felt when you’d kneel

Not the word
Not the love
Not what you thought from above

It feeds
It grows
It clouds all that you will know
Deceit
Deceive
Decide just what you believe

I see faith in your eyes
Never you hear the discouraging lies
I hear faith in your cries
Broken is the promise, betrayal
The healing hand held back by the deepened nail

Follow the God that failed

Find your peace
Find your say
Find the smooth road in your way

Trust you gave
A child to save
Left you cold and him in grave

It feeds
It grows
It clouds all that you will know
Deceit
Deceive
Decide just what you believe

I see faith in your eyes
Never you hear the discouraging lies
I hear faith in your cries
Broken is the promise, betrayal
The healing hand held back by the deepened nail

Follow the God that failed

I see faith in your eyes
Broken is the promise, betrayal
The healing hand held back by the deepened nail

Follow the God that failed

Pride you took
Pride you feel
Pride that you felt when you’d kneel

Trust you gave
A child to save
Left you cold and him in grave

I see faith in your eyes
Never you hear the discouraging lies
I hear faith in your cries
Broken is the promise, betrayal
The healing hand held back by deepened nail

Follow the God that failed

Although I don’t know when Britain and other parts of Europe began setting up video and snapshot cameras all over their public spaces or how long the US and other countries have had hi-res satellite cameras, but the following lyrics from the 1982 song Electric Eye by the heavy metal band Judas Priest provide a telling commentary on the surveillance states of Europe and the growing US surveillance state.

Electric Eye
by Judas Priest

Up here in space
I’m looking down on you
My lasers trace
Everything you do

You think you’ve private lives
Think nothing of the kind
There is no true escape
I’m watching all the time

I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean

I’m elected electric spy
I’m protected electric eye

Always in focus
You can’t feel my stare
I zoom into you
You don’t know I’m there

I take a pride in probing all your secret moves
My tearless retina takes pictures that can prove

I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean

I’m elected electric spy
I’m protected electric eye

Electric eye, in the sky
Feel my stare, always there
There’s nothing you can do about it
Develop and expose
I feed upon your every thought
And so my power grows

I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean

I’m elected electric spy
I’m protected electric eye

Protected. detective. electric eye

I don’t know which is more disturbing, the growing surveillance state in the US or the growing trend of paternalistic surveillance parents. Libertarians often point out the encroachments of the State into our right to privacy (a corollary of our rights to life, liberty, and property), but few recognize or emphasize enough the growing trend of parents setting up video cameras in their children’s rooms and installing GPS trackers in their children’s cars. This trend has started making headlines recently. The overprotective and surprisingly prudish former wrestler Hulk Hogan in the reality tv show Hogan Knows Best comes to mind as just one example of the latter. Equally disturbing is the evidence of at least one kid in one of the tv news reports being complacent about it.

These three trends – growing statism, paternalism, and parentalism – are intertwined and mutually reinforcing. It thus should come as no surprise to see all three as growing trends in America. In America, the state has been particularly inept at providing security and other services – partly due to the highly heterogenous culture and relative decentralization of power within government between the various branches and levels of government, largely due to its monopoly on the legal use of force and ultimate decision-making – while at the same time, inevitably, divisive democratic politics and the spoils over which the various pressure groups fight (personal and corporate welfare in its various incarnations) have among other factors led to a deterioration of American social ties and mores. Faced with a semi-socialist state pushing paternalistic policies, it should come as no surprise that the American people, particularly those most dependent upon the state for their lives and livelihoods, will become less and less responsible, producing, generous, and trusting, indeed virtuous, individuals. But again, given the increasing parental abdication of childraising responsibility to the state accompanied by the general ineptitude of the state, small wonder that we see parents increasingly turning to technology as the “easy” way to monitor their children every minute of the day and night. Should we really be surprised to see children becoming used to it? And these children will grow up even more ready to monitor and regulate their own children’s every move as well as submit to the state’s policies to monitor and regulate their own and their children’s. Paternalism breeds parentalism breeds more paternalism in a vicious circle until we have a nation full of childlike adults being ruled by a handful of wealthy despots. Philosopher-kings? In your dreams.

Paternalism is dangerous, both in its statist and in its familial variety, as is parentalism, the other side of the coin. If we treat adults like children, they will eventually come to behave like children. If we do not teach children to behave like adults, then they will become childlike adults. Children need to be taught independence, initiative, self-responsibility, and other virtues. Moreover, they should be given a level of trust consistent with their level of development and aimed at their continued development into competent and responsible adults. They shouldn’t be treated as incompetent and untrustworthy unless they prove themselves incompetent and untrustworthy. Coddling them and not trusting them from the start is a recipe for failure when it comes to raising competent and responsible adults. Children need to be able to make their own decisions (within limits) and the mistakes that will inevitably go with them. Yes, one cannot stress enough that they need structure and a consistent system of rules consistently and fairly enforced, but this should not be mistaken with totalitarian monitoring and control. These modern surveillance technologies certainly have their uses, but let’s be careful about going overboard with them and abusing our fellow adult human beings and our children.

Note: See here and here for Judas Priest lyrics, and here for the official Judas Priest website.

“Taxes Are Best When You Pay Nothing At All” via Mises Econ Blog.

Addendum: And see here for another tax song.