Top Fifty "Conservative" Rock Recordings

Now this is a fun article from National Review Online; the "top fifty" conservative rock songs. There are several to take issue with, and several to consider. Surprising to me are the number of anti-abortion songs on the list.

One entirely bogus song on the list is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” America has been committed from its inception to the proposition that "all men are created equal." American conservatives own that proposition, since it is ours. The Confederacy rejected that proposition and, hence, whatever it was, it is not, and cannot be, conservative; nor can their modern-day sympathizers.

One song I might be tempted to add to the list is Pink Floyd's "Another brick in the wall." Here's a recording. While I'm not at all an educational radical, it does seem to me that, of necessity (which is not to commend it), every form of institutionalized education, whether governmental or private, devotes an inordinate amount of time to administrative matters of enforcing "discipline" in classrooms. I.e., rather than communicating knowledge, teachers devote time to making sure that students conform to their own standards of conduct. However necessary it may be, it's nonetheless tragic -- tragic for the teacher, for the entire class, and for the student(s) who receive the bulk of the teachers' attention.

And while I'm in a somewhat more-libertarian mindset than usual, I might also add "Little Boxes" to the list. Although I do recognize that "Little Boxes" is not a Rock song. (And, yes, I do think that Pete Seeger is one of the most annoying people in the world. But this is a classic rendition of the song.)