9 Comments

More than a few songs by Leslie Fish qualify. Firestorm, The Arizona Sword, Rhododendron Honey, The Sun Is Also a Warrior, etc.

Expand full comment

A lot of Rush songs have libertarian lyrics. For example: Anthem (Inspired by the Ayn Rand novel), The Trees (a parable about equality of outcome vs opportunity), 2112 (about collectivism), Territories (anti-Nationalist), Heresy (about the fall of communism), Freewill (about individualism)

Some other songs with libertarian lyrics I like:

"Long Haired Country Boy" - The Charlie Daniels Band

"Here come the People in Grey" - The Kinks

"Cult of Personality" - Living Colour

"Civil War" - Guns n' Roses

"Taxman" - The Beatles

"Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" - Public Enemy

"Deer Dance" - System of a Down

"1,000 Eyes" - Death

Expand full comment

When I was getting involved in libertarianism back in the early seventies, Who's Next was widely admired in the particular libertarian circles I moved in. "Won't Get Fooled Again" particularly spoke to us with its warning against revolutionary power hunger.

My politics playlist also includes Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting" ("You looked too small/In their big black car/To be a threat to the men in power"), Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Who'll Stop the Rain?" ("Five-year plans and New Deals/Wrapped in golden chains"), and Steppwolf's song about the history of the United States, "Monster" ("Far from the reaches of kingdom and Pope"). More recently, the Arrogant Worms' "The Credit Song" has some neat lines about fiscal policy: "If you can't make your payment/Then do just like the national government/You can pay what you owe/By taking out a bigger loan."

In a different spirit, the Lovin' Spoonful's "Money" is a cheerful little song about becoming solvent through financial transactions . . .

Expand full comment

Very broadly defined: Russ Roberts and John Papola published two rap songs about economics that I consider to be pro-free market merely because they give it serious air time alongside Keynesian ideas:

"Fear the Boom and Bust", and "Fight of the Century".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc

(Their media division EconStories has a handful of similar songs.)

There was a FunnyOrDie skit starring Kristen Bell as a Mary Poppins who couldn't work until the minimum wage went up. Someone on the free market side made a response song to it that I can't find (he starred as a chimney sweep, of course). It was posted years ago to CafeHayek; that's all I can remember.

Expand full comment

I would think that the most famous French song written by a poet and that is about freedom from government is Le Déserteur, by Boris Vian. Not sure if you would count it as libertarian though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_D%C3%A9serteur_(song)

Expand full comment

Great picks, though a lot of rough beasts therein.

Expand full comment

I strongly recommend Robinson Jeffers. His volume Be Angry at the Sun, written during World War II and expressing profound distress at what it would like do to American institutions, is worth a look as a whole, if you can find it. But I also think highly of "The Purse-Seine," with its vivid imagery (https://allpoetry.com/The-Purse-Seine), and of "Shine, Perishing Republic" (https://allpoetry.com/Shine,-Perishing-Republic).

As to cummings, I like "a politician is an arse upon/which everything has sat except a man" and his sonnet "next to of course god america i" (https://allpoetry.com/next-to-of-course-god-america-i), a memorable satire on political rhetoric.

Going back further in time, the final chorus from Shelley's Hellas, beginning "The world's great age begins anew" is worth a look.

Expand full comment

I'm trying very hard not to read this as a Trump poem. “Here is nothing new nor aught unproven,” say the Trumpets,

“Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed.

“It is the King—the King we schooled aforetime !”

(Trumpets in the marshes—in the eyot at Runnymede!)

Great poems, thank you

Expand full comment
author

Oddly enough, that poem is a defense of the Boer war. Kipling viewed the Boer treatment of the Uitlanders, non-citizen residents, as tyrannical.

Expand full comment