"Come all of you cowboys, and fight for your land!"



This just in from poet and metaphysician Charles Upton on the Bundy Ranch stand-off.

Dear Kevin,

Here's a little something I just wrote today. A friend sent me an email about how the Feds stole a herd of cattle from that Nevada rancher, and how militias from around the U.S. are coming to his aid. It looks like a  range war may be shaping up. That made me remember Woody Guthrie's song "Ranger's Command", and think how perfectly appropriate it is for the present circumstances. Woody, a darling of the Left, who put a sign on his guitar reading "this machine kills Fascists",  wrote a song that's totally in the spirit of a cause now being adopted by the Right-wing militias.
 




And here's the thing I wrote:

CREDO

When the Leftists or the Communists stand with the oppressed against the oppressor, then I am a
    Leftist and a Communist.
When the Tea party activists or the Patriots stand with the oppressed against the oppressor, then
    I am a Patriot and a Tea party man.
When the Left is the oppressor, I am a Right-winger; when the Right is the oppressor I am of the
    Left—
But no—forget that. What I really want to say is: to hell with Left and Right, they don’t mean
    anything anymore.
The real fight is not between Left and Right but between Up and Down.
Wherever the oppressors are, I am against them. Wherever the downtrodden are, I am with them.
My ideology is not Liberal or Conservative, Communist or Fascist; it is only this:
That whoever exalts himself will be humbled; that whoever humbles himself will be exalted;
That those who hunger and thirst for justice are blest, for they will be satisfied;
That the downtrodden, those whose faces are ground into the earth, are also blest, for they shall
    inherit the earth.

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