But it WASN’T pretty good for politically-motivated music. The Wall is pretty good for politically motivated music. This is pretty mundane stuff really. He’s trying to do what Immortal Technique does for extreme leftist politics but Immortal Technique’s flow puts this guy to shame. If you want to hear good politically motivated rap pull out Public Enemy, Eminem, and others. As I posted I showed something that is actually pretty good for politically motivated rap by posting the creationist rap about Richard Dawkins.
Yeah, except it came across as being not that great. It’s just not a very good song. It isn’t terrible, but it’s not good.
Probably not in their teens but you are correct. This guy is not the Ayn Rand or Robert Heinlein of rap though.
Here’s a rap by a guy who is reaching a much wider audience in favor of the Second Amendment.
This guy’s got an audience of ‘rebellious young people’ and he actually can put together a decent rap. Whether you like it or not is another matter, but it’s underground and DIY, yet far superior to the amateurish video you posted.
This song also falls into the same trap as the one you brought us though. Like most political rap its inability to stay on message waters it down by favoring one party over the other. In this case it’s silly because he lashes out at Republicans though it’s usually Democrats who want to take guns away.
Sorry. The left will always have you beat on this one. Not really sure why that is. Probably we have more free time from our tacit acceptance of government handouts.
Huh. I was, and am, a big Robert Heinlein fan. Started reading him in late high school and college, but I was never tempted in the slightest by the political philosophy in his books. Wonder if I’m an exception?
Heinlein’s flavor of libertarianism (if we can agree on that characterization) just convinced me that it could never work in actual practice. In his world, everyone is smart enough to act in their own self-interest. The people are also incredibly polite, but in the end have a “fuck off and die” attitude for anyone outside their family or inner circle. Always struck me as kind of childish.
Okay, maybe it’s because it’s not left wing politically motivated music. Usually, the right-wing political music is crap country or “Jesus is my boyfriend” Christian Rock.
Actually, I guess I’d have to say that Rush is probably the most successful band at incorporating libertarian themes.
But I honestly think that the rap I liked to is better than you’re giving it credit for being.
I’m a big fan of Eminem. But I listened to that Immortal Technique 2nd Amendment song, and I didn’t think the flow in it was very good. I think the Libertarian rapper’s song is better from a technical point of view.
This is true. It would take someone of the stature of Eminem or Dr. Dre to have that kind of impact.
Anyway, if you want to hear more conservative music, check out my Prime Minister Stephen Harper singing the Beatles and playing piano… Accompanied by Yo-Yo Ma, no less. It kind of makes my point about the value of music in terms of improving your image and capturing youth - that YouTube video has half a million hits already, and there are over 7,800 comments, most along the lines of, “Hey, I thought you were lame, but this is cool!”
Here’s the full performance with better quality. Nobody would confuse this with a world-class performance, but that’s not what matters. He’s exhibiting a certain amount of cool. The right needs more of this stuff.
I know quite a few Heinlein fans who don’t buy his political philosophy, and some who really didn’t notice it much. But even if he swayed 10% of his readers, that’s millions of people. If you scratch a Heinlein fan, you might not find a libertarian a majority of the time, but if you scratch a Libertarian, you’ll usually find a Heinlein fan. In my experience, anyway.
In the 1960’s, “Stranger in a Strange Land” helped kick off the free love/hippy movement, probably much to Heinlein’s chagrin, but it’s an indication of the power of his writing.
I never got that at all. There are plenty of examples in Heinlein’s books of people in free societies coming together to help each other. One of Heinlein’s favorite anecdotes was about a hobo who saw a woman with her foot stuck in a railroad track, with a train bearing down on her. Her husband was frantically trying to free her, and the Hobo joined in and all three kept trying until the train hit them and killed them all. Heinlein said, “We know why the Husband stayed with her, but why did the Hobo sacrifice his life to help a stranger? Because that’s the way a free man lives - and dies.” Gallantry to strangers was a big part of his philosophy.
You might want to read Heinlein’s short essay, This I believe. Heinlein’s libertarianism wasn’t based on the attitude of, “Screw strangers”, it was based on his belief that people were essentially good and didn’t need government to tell them what to do or who to help, and that charity based on a sense of community and personal honor and integrity was vastly superior to charity mandated by government and delivered by anonymous bureaucrats.
If this were posted in Cafe Society, wouldn’t a moderator chime in if it devolved into a political debate? So . . . this is in Great Debates, but the only thing people are interested in discussing is the track’s artistic merit? What gives?
Maybe it’s because the song’s agenda has been debated into the ground in this forum; the track offers absolutely nothing new in a Great Debates context. But it’s a pretty fat target for a CS drubbing.
Any chance you knew that, Sam, and posted it in the wrong forum for safety’s sake?
Huh? I told you exactly why I posted it here. I assumed it would devolve into a political discussion. You’re trying awfully hard to find bad motives where they don’t exist.
I don’t know. Couldn’t you say the same about any influential book/movie/song? No one thing is responsible for the entire culture, but Stranger in a Strange Land is widely considered to have been an influence on that generation. Along with many other things. That’s why I said it ‘helped’ to kick it off - not that it was solely responsible.
Well, not that many hippies were into sci-fi, and they had no acquaintance with Heinlien. So Stranger is likely the only Heinlien they read, had they read more, they might well have wondered who was this crypto-Fascist hack from the Rod Serling School of Creative Typing?
Did you know Kilgore Trout kicked his ass in the alley behind a bar in San Francisco? True story.
And there examples of just the opposite. Heinlein was quite prolific, and his writing evolved over time.
But I suppose we see what we want to see to some extent, and I saw some of what you recall in his writing. But also some real misanthropy and cynicism at times. In any case, Heinlein’s brand of Libertarianism (and most other brands) strikes me as both a wonderful ideal and laughably unrealistic. Which is fine with me as a reader of Heinlein because he was, after all, a science fiction / fantasy writer.
Terrible video. Laughable really. But I completely encourage it. Further confirms that conservatives will continue to alienate (a) minorities and (b) young people with their over-eager efforts to embrace them.