Sweet irony. I wonder how many sheeple back then thought he was serious and not sarcastic.
Bob.
Stucky
January 28, 2014 9:02 am
[img[/img]
Zarathustra
January 28, 2014 9:03 am
Beautiful song.
Bostonbob
January 28, 2014 9:10 am
Why are we deducting 1050lbs for a tare and what the hell is a tare? Looks like they were worried about climate change even in 1895!
Bob.
Administrator
Author
January 28, 2014 9:24 am
What Did You Learn in School Today?
Words and Music by Tom Paxton
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that Washington never told a lie.
I learned that soldiers seldom die.
I learned that everybody’s free.
And that’s what the teacher said to me.
That’s what I learned in school today.
That’s what I learned in school.
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that policemen are my friends.
I learned that justice never ends.
I learned that murderers die for their crimes.
Even if we make a mistake sometimes.
That’s what I learned in school today.
That’s what I learned in school.
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned our government must be strong.
It’s always right and never wrong.
Our leaders are the finest men.
And we elect them again and again.
That’s what I learned in school today.
That’s what I learned in school.
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that war is not so bad.
I learned of the great ones we have had.
We fought in Germany and in France.
And some day I might get my chance.
That’s what I learned in school today.
That’s what I learned in school.
Iska Waran
January 28, 2014 9:27 am
Stalin’s songbird. Oh sure, he eventually repudiated Stalin, after defending him had become impossible. He was one of those who pined for real, pure, humanist communism – oblivious (or better, impervious) to the fact that the benign communism he dreamed of never existed anywhere on the planet. People on this site bemoan progressive income tax as theft, but Seeger would have stolen all of the fruits of everyone’s labor. People like him are a big part of why we got the Great Society and the Immigration Act of 1965. We rightly see Martin Luther King’s call for a guaranteed income as a recipe for indolence and social breakdown. Is there any question where Pete Seeger would have come down on that question. Every government policy that created the Thirty Blocks of Squalor was a leftist invention. Just because he called out some hypocrisy and rejected jingoistic patriotism doesn’t mean he wasn’t, on balance, a malevolent influence.
Thinker
January 28, 2014 9:30 am
Bob, “tare” is the weight of the object holding the product. So, when I sell a bushel of apples, I need to allow for the tare, or the weight of the crate the apples are in. If I have a newer scale, I can put the empty crate on the scale, hit the tare function, and it zeroes out the scale even though the crate is still on it. Then I add 40 lbs of apples to the crate to make 1 bushel. (Note: bushel is actually a volumetric measure, but everyone uses weight these days)
The wheat example above tells you the tare weight (the wagon), so you can figure out how much actual wheat there is.
Thinker I was thinking that may be it ,but I had never heard of it. We did the same thing scrapping steal, we had to have the registered weight of the truck so as to accurately determine the amount of scrap we were paid for.That was a fun summer, spent the whole time with a blow torch cutting steal beams. Hot summer fun.
Bob.
Bostonbob
January 28, 2014 9:56 am
Stalin’s songbird:
Seeger was a prominent campaigner in the struggle for African-American civil rights, and his legacy there ought be applauded. But racial equality was not the only cause to which Seeger committed himself. International communism, and in particular its Stalinist variant, was an equal, if not more, significant cause in Seeger’s public life. He was “Stalin’s songbird,” as David Boaz describes, writing about how Seeger zigged and zagged, with the rest of American communists in the 1930′s and 1940′s, in blind obedience to orders from Moscow. Seeger’s vaunted opposition to American “militarism” has persuaded him to oppose U.S. military intervention wherever and whenever it has occurred, including, for instance, the mission to displace the Taliban.
Seeger was 10 years old in 1930. Sounds like a little exaggeration on Boaz’ part. Was he blindly following Moscow’s orders as a teenager. Laughable.
Sounds like a Neo-con using propaganda to discredit an anti-military foe.
Bostonbob
January 28, 2014 9:57 am
Sorry Iska, got my threads mixed up, need to stop drinking in the morning.
Bob.
Administrator
Author
January 28, 2014 10:17 am
Iska Waran
January 28, 2014 10:34 am
It doesn’t sound at all like exaggeration on Boaz’ part. Seeger’s defense of Stalinism was clear. In the wiki entry for Seeger he’s quoted as admitting (in the context of of the rise of Solidarity) that he should apologize for his defense of Stalin and for merely considering him a “hard charger”. I think you have Seeger’s hammer, Admin, and you’re looking for the nail of of neoconservatism. Not everything is about neoconservatism circa 2014. The communists actually were trying to take over the world. History is pretty clear on that. Plus, are we not supposed to notice that Seeger’s music sucked balls? The lesbians nuns made us sing that stupid hammer song in the ’70’s. It was part of the same left wing indoctrination that today has kids watching An Inconvenient Truth. When you drive through The Squalor, you can thank Seeger.
I read Boaz’ screed. All hot air and not much substance. Blaming an anti-war folk singer for the 30 blocks of squalor is a real reach. Keep trying though. I’m sure you’re convincing everyone Seeger was a communist. I guess McCarthy is your hero.
Wyoming Mike
January 28, 2014 11:37 am
Loved Pete Seeger. More truth in that 2 minutes than in a month of newscasts.
Nonanonymous
January 28, 2014 11:43 am
How many people know the Bolshevik Revolution was financed by the US Treasury?
BostonBob, quoting anything from Commentary, a prime neocon fishwrap, is laughable. The neocons love to pin the commie (or anti-semite) label on all of their enemies but they don’t like have light shined on their commie, perpetual global revolution, Trotskyite origins.
Bostonbob
January 28, 2014 12:15 pm
Z,
I agree with you, I was just pointing out where the Stalin’s Songbird came from. It is funny when you listen to the song how many TBP themes are highlighted. Who would have thought that it would get this bad way back then when they thought is was so unfair. I remember many of the earthy, crunchy types, as we called them and their silly folk music, we loved our rock. We had to learn many of these songs on grade school, early indoctrination. Maybe they were not as crazy as many of us thought back then.
Bob.
Stucky
January 28, 2014 12:18 pm
Seeger was a complex man. Lots of data points to choose from both those who like him, and those who do not. That’s to be expected when you live for 90+ years.
Pete Seeger Positives
—-1) He was never a big star and he didn’t care. He believed the song was more important than the singer.
—-2) Summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955. I like anyone the government doesn’t!
—-3) Stayed true to his beliefs his entire life even at great personal cost. I don’t agree with all his views – not at all – but I have to admire his integrity, and even humility.
Pete Seeger Negatives
—-1) He sang at Oreos inauguration.
—-2) His song “We Shall Overcome” ….. I hate it.
—-3) He was /is a lifelong communist, albeit with a lowercase “c”. Until a few years ago, along with Noam Chomsky he served on the advisory board for Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism …. a splinter group of the Communist Party USA.
Iska Waran
January 28, 2014 12:59 pm
Stuck, Did I convince you he was a communist or did you convince yourself?
Did you come across Pete Seeger’s master plan to create the 30 Blocks of Squalor?
I think the Vietnam War was to rid the world of those nasty communists too. Come to think of it, so was the Korean War. Come to think of it, so was the Bay of Pigs.
Those dreaded communists were everywhere. Who knew they were singing folk songs too.
I want to hear your opinion of Senator McCarthy. Was he just a misunderstood patriot?
PrisonerofZelda
January 28, 2014 1:15 pm
Seeger was a Red Diaper Doper of the first order. The only thing he ever got right was oposition to the Vietnam War and that was for all the wrong reasons. His music also sucked -Fuck him.
Stucky
January 28, 2014 1:29 pm
“Stuck, Did I convince you he was a communist or did you convince yourself?” — Iska Waran
Neither. Seeger himself admits it. Your connection to 30 Blocks of Squalor is quite a stretch.
Admin, I love all anti-war songs, regardless of the source.
In eight years, Utah has quietly reduced homelessness by 78 percent, and is on track to end homelessness by 2015.
How did Utah accomplish this? Simple. Utah solved homelessness by giving people homes. In 2005, Utah figured out that the annual cost of E.R. visits and jail stays for homeless people was about $16,670 per person, compared to $11,000 to provide each homeless person with an apartment and a social worker. So, the state began giving away apartments, with no strings attached. Each participant in Utah’s Housing First program also gets a caseworker to help them become self-sufficient, but they keep the apartment even if they fail. The program has been so successful that other states are hoping to achieve similar results with programs modeled on Utah’s.
It sounds like Utah borrowed a page from Homes Not Handcuffs, the 2009 report by The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and The National Coalition for the Homeless. Using a 2004 survey and anecdotal evidence from activists, the report concluded that permanent housing for the homeless is cheaper than criminalization. Housing is not only more human, it’s economical.
Iska Waran
January 28, 2014 1:36 pm
I’m not really fully up to speed on Joe McCarthy. Know more about Gene. From what I’ve seen/heard (which is all probably distilled by PBS & Bill Moyers), he went after people in a paranoid fashion, hauling them before his HUAC committee and yelling at them like Vincent D’Onofrio in Law & Order until they confessed. I don’t know if he used D’Onofrio’s tip-your-head-sideways technique. So I can’t call him a patriot because of his abusive tactics. On the other hand, it is internally contradictory for someone to expect and demand fair treatment while they advance an ideology that only pays lip service to human rights. Militant Islam (is there any other kind?), for example, demands diversity and co-existence up to the point when they gain a majority of a given population, at which point they shift to dhimmitude & jizya for kafirs. Same thing with communists. By the ’50’s it should have been clear that real-world communism didn’t countenance democracy, free speech, free association, etc. Did that excuse McCarthy’s extremism? No. Does it make communists hypocritical for attacking McCarthy’s anti-democratic tactics? Yes. Again, I’m not a neocon. I’m a paleocon. I’m for staying out of all wars and bringing the troops home from everywhere. But just because Seeger was against wars that deserved opposing doesn’t mean that his overall prescription of communism wasn’t bad. In Googling Seeger a few minutes ago, I stumbled across this comment on FreeRepublic: “Too bad he was a Communist. Communists aren’t bad people, unless you express a desire for freedom. Then they want to kill you…”
So Pete Seeger wanted to kill people who didn’t agree with him?
The more you type, the crazier you sound.
You’ve got one dude who wrote an article about Seeger as your entire wiki assault against a folk singer who was against all of the illegal US wars since the 1950s.
I also read that he hated Hitler. OMG. What a crazy dangerous communist.
This entire thread of bullshit is laughable. It sounds like the neo-cons and their bullshit about terrorist Muslims lurking everywhere.
Iska Waran
January 28, 2014 1:39 pm
Connecting Seeger to the Squalor isn’t quite a stretch. It’s just a little stretch. Hardly a stretch at all. From each according to his ability. To each according to his needs. Take from Llpoh. Give to FSA. Threaten with hammer as necessary.
Stucky
January 28, 2014 1:52 pm
1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don’t hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. Clean up your own mess
6. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
7. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
8. Wash your hands before you eat.
9. Flush.
10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
11. Live a balanced life – learn some, drink some, draw some, paint some, sing dance and play, and work everyday some.
12. Take a nap every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
14. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Stryrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why. We are all like that.
15. Goldfish, hamsters, white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
Above from the book “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”
Zarathustra
January 28, 2014 2:05 pm
This thread blows. Who the fuck cares what Pete Seeger’s ideology was about? Looking at his bio, his dad was a pacifist too. The OP is an awesome song that is truer today than it was 50 years ago. Anyone who doesn’t think Seeger made positive contributions to our culture is an idiot who can kiss my ass.
Iska Waran
January 28, 2014 2:14 pm
Good point. It’s not like popular culture advances a political or social agenda or anything…
PrisonerofZelda
January 28, 2014 2:21 pm
Wake up, Seeger was no pacifist. He actively supported the Comunists during the Spanish civil war. This dipshit is a classic Koolaid drinker, he thinks communism is the answer, but all the implementers were wrong.( Stalin , mao etc.)
Hmm. Good old Pete was against corporate interests leading us into WWII. He was against going to war in order to benefit JP Morgan. He sounds really subversive. That’s funny, he sounds like 80% of the TBP commentors, except he was saying it 74 years ago.
In the spring of 1941, the twenty-one-year-old Seeger performed as a member of the Almanac Singers along with Millard Lampell, Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Butch and Bess Lomax Hawes, and Lee Hays. Seeger and the Almanacs cut several albums of 78s on Keynote and other labels, Songs for John Doe (recorded in late February or March and released in May 1941), the Talking Union, and an album each of sea chanteys and pioneer songs. Written by Millard Lampell, Songs for John Doe was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Hays, joined by Josh White and Sam Gary. It contained lines such as, “It wouldn’t be much thrill to die for Du Pont in Brazil,” that were sharply critical of Roosevelt’s unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in September 1940). This anti-war/anti-draft tone reflected the Communist Party line after the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which maintained the war was “phony” and a mere pretext for big American corporations to get Hitler to attack Soviet Russia. Seeger has said he believed this line of argument at the time—as did many fellow members of the Young Communist League (YCL). Though nominally members of the Popular Front, which was allied with Roosevelt and more moderate liberals, the YCL’s members still smarted from Roosevelt and Churchill’s arms embargo to Loyalist Spain (which Roosevelt later called a mistake),[60] and the alliance frayed in the confusing welter of events.
PrisonerofZelda
January 28, 2014 3:08 pm
Admin , I know you claim to be a CPA , but commrade Seeger was 17 at the start of the war in 1936. Most US battalions were composed of volunteers aged 17 – 20. Incidently the war ended in spring of 1939.
You dumbasses continually tell me how fucking stupid teenagers are, but now you idiots are trying to convince people that Pete Seeger was a dangerous flaming red communist at the age of 17 who wanted a Stalin like government in the U.S.
Keep digging deeper. I’m laughing my ass off at your drivel and outlandish bullshit.
Wyoming Mike
January 28, 2014 3:18 pm
Admin is a CPA, numbnuts. I worked with him. He’s almost as good a one as me. :*)
SSS
January 28, 2014 6:50 pm
@ Admin
I’m with Iska and Zelda on this one. Seeger not only bought into communist doctrine hook line and sinker, he did it for ALL of his adult life, and he spent most of his life defending one of the most evil genocidal murderers in human history, Josef Stalin.
Even the New York Times noted that Seeger criticized Stalin “as early as 1993.” My, oh my, Seeger was a youthful 73 years old before the light came on. I think it was about 1956 when Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin in a secret speech. Seeger was so fucking dense that it took him another 37 years to agree with Stalin’s successor!!!!
In closing, I accept your apology for your foolish defense of this blithering idiot.
Keep reminiscing about the good old days when the CIA murdered heads of state in the name of fighting communism. I love those stories. Read your wiki page for comprehension. He drifted away from communism in the 1940s.
Now let’s hear your bullshit about the socialist George Orwell and that awful communist John Steinbeck. They must be classified as blithering idiots in your book. Right bucko?
You idiots are endlessly entertaining with your drivel.
Zara nails it. You assholes are great at judging others when you have a beam in your eye.
Tell us about Aldous Huxley being a blithering idiot because he did illegal drugs. We all know how you won the Drug War when you were done defeating communism.
Please reveal more blithering idiots, so I can make sure I read everything they wrote.
Blithering idiots is in the eye of the beholder.
Some days I realize how many truly blithering idiots I attract to TBP.
SSS
January 28, 2014 7:17 pm
“Seeger was a complex man.”
—-Stucky
No, he wasn’t. How “complex” is a human being who for most of his life adamantly defends a mass murderer like Josef Stalin. I have another adjective for Seeger. Stupid. And I’m being polite.
“but I have to admire his (Seeger’s) integrity”
—-Stucky
Are you fucking serious? Look up the definition of integrity. Then refer to my comment above.
Zarathustra
January 28, 2014 7:33 pm
SSS, Do Seeger’s songs and their lyrics reflect a promotion of Stalinism? How about the one he performed in the video Admin posted?
Truth is truth. I will accept, laud and embrace the truth whether it comes from a Libertarian, a Commie, a Nazi, a Statist, a Liberal, a Paleocon, an Anarchist or a Neocon (okay scratch neocons, every one of them spews nothing but lies).
Seeger is a hero in my book. He spent his life preaching through his music peace, justice and freedom. I may not see any of them in exactly the same way, but that’s enough for me.
gilberts
January 28, 2014 8:24 pm
matslinger-I’ll give you credit for that 1895 test-but you time travel one of those 8th graders to today and he might be smart as a whip on grammar and math and history, but he wouldn’t be able to talk to a girl, figure out a cell phone, program a VCR, turn on a computer, drive a car, cheat on his final exam, make a bong, calculate the value of his weed if 50% of it turns out to be seeds and stems, update his facebook, or tweet about how lame 1895 was. Plus, those big boondocker shoes, filthy coveralls, and wool shirt wouldn’t help him get an edge when he tries to court one of those lovely goth or emo girls…
Zarathustra
January 28, 2014 8:48 pm
Pete Seeger, RIP:
bb
January 28, 2014 9:04 pm
He is /was a communist POS .He was/is a traitor to America.At least McCarthy knew the G-*damn enemy when he saw one and they are still the enemy to anyone with a brain.Who’s doing their best to destroy what’s left of America.?Admin you want to take a guess ?People just like
Seeger.Who’s destroying any future your children will have,?People just like Seeger..Admin ,you call
Me an idiot but at least I’m not a G -damn useful idiot like Seeger.God,sometimes you really get on my
Nerves.
Stucky
January 28, 2014 9:07 pm
“Integrity is a concept of CONSISTENCY of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes.” ……………………. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity
In 1940, Seeger, along with Woody Guthrie formed the Almanac Singers — a folk music group which dealt with such themes as pacifism, labor unions, and the alleged mistreatment of workers by employers and the U.S. government alike.
In 1956 Seeger was indicted for contempt of Congress because of his evasive answers regarding his ties to Communism ……… in 1962 his conviction was overturned on a technicality.
In the 1960s Seeger was deeply involved in the civil rights movement and its hallmark demonstrations.
In the early 1970’s he protested the Vietnam War.
In 1980’s he opposed the U.S. military campaigns and weapons buildup during the Reagan years of the Cold War.
In 1995 Seeger did say he was still a communist …. “I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.”
In 2002 Seeger was a signatory to the “Statement of Conscience” …… a document that condemned not only the Bush administration’s “stark new measures of repression,” but also its “unjust, immoral, illegitimate, [and] openly imperial policy towards the world.”
In 2004 in an interview with Mother Jones magazine Seeger said ——- “I’m still a communist, in the sense that I don’t believe the world will survive with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.”
—————————————— –
So, SSS, would you say Seeger is pretty consistent? He fits the very definition of ‘integrity’.
I’m not sure why you hate him so much. It seems you’re not able to separate Good Seeger from Bad Seeger, so you just say “fuckit, let’s crucify him”. That’s an old CIA trick, isn’t it?
Stucky
January 28, 2014 9:14 pm
“How “complex” is a human being who for most of his life adamantly defends a mass murderer like Josef Stalin. ” —————– SSS
Why are you such a fucking liar?? You know goddamned well and sure that Seeger renounced that shit in the 1950s. Even apologized for it.
I guess you make shit up to build your case? You know what that means? You have NO integrity. Look it up.
SSS
January 28, 2014 9:26 pm
So, SSS, would you say Seeger is pretty consistent? He fits the very definition of ‘integrity’.
I’m not sure why you hate him so much. It seems you’re not able to separate Good Seeger from Bad Seeger, so you just say “fuckit, let’s crucify him”.
—-Stucky
I don’t hate Pete Seeger, as you assert, nor do I want to crucify him, as you assert. Stop trying to put words in my mouth.
I simply said he was a stupid human being, totally incapable of seeing or accepting what was plain as day for most of his adult life. His consistent support of the Soviet Union and Josef Stalin is NOT integrity, it’s stupidity. Get it?
llpoh
January 28, 2014 9:27 pm
Stuck – please provide source material for that statement. I cannot find it anywhere. Plus he did visit Russia in the sixties and did much later express regret that he did not ask to see the gulags when he was there. He left the Communist party in the fifties, but from what I can see he renounced Stalin much later than that.
Your source for that info, please.
llpoh
January 28, 2014 9:30 pm
“Mr. Radosh, who once studied banjo with Mr. Seeger, said in an interview that he had idolized him, but he has become a dogged critic of Mr. Seeger’s politics. Mr. Radosh wrote that he was “deeply moved” that the singer, “now in his late 80s, had decided to acknowledge what had been his major blind spot opposing social injustice in America while supporting the most tyrannical of regimes abroad.”
But in fact, Mr. Seeger, 87, made such statements years ago, at least as early as his 1993 book, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” In the book, he said in a 1995 interview with The New York Times Magazine, he had apologized “for following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader.”
I do not see anywhere where Seeger renounced Stalin in the fifties. Quite the contrary.
llpoh
January 28, 2014 9:39 pm
I am going to go out on a limb here and call bullshit.
I challenge anyone to provide evidence that Seeger renounced Stalin and apologized for support of him in the fifties. I have done a fairly lengthy search, and I can find no such evidence or report. Quite the contrary – everything points to Seeger finally saying he made a mistake late in his life, but not prior to that.
Whatever else he did or did not do, his support for Stalin was ill advised indeed. I have read a few interviews from folks that knew him that suggest that he was well-intentioned but prone to making severe errors in judgement.
El Coyote
January 28, 2014 9:41 pm
seeger is before my time, sorry
bb
January 28, 2014 9:47 pm
Hey you dumb ass , I’m the only one you can call.a blithering idiot.Leave every one else alone.
SSS
January 28, 2014 9:51 pm
“How “complex” is a human being who for most of his life adamantly defends a mass murderer like Josef Stalin. ” —————– SSS
“Why are you such a fucking liar?? You know goddamned well and sure that Seeger renounced that shit in the 1950s. Even apologized for it.”
—-Stucky
On this subject, you’re not only an intellectual lightweight, but a god damned propagandist, Stucky. Give it up. Seeger NEVER renounced a fucking thing in the 1950s. In addition to the smash greeted upon you by Llpoh, feast on this, which backs 100% what I said about Seeger.
In the late 1980s Seeger also expressed disapproval of violent revolutions, remarking to an interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change and that “the most lasting revolutions are those that take place over a period of time.” In his autobiography “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” (1993, 1997, reissued in 2009), Seeger wrote, “Should I apologize for all this? I think so.”
Great. Revolution in Hungary in 1956? Seeger disapproves. Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1968? Seeger disapproves.
Oh, did you note WHEN Seeger finally sees the light, just as I said? 1993. Take a fucking hike, Stucky. You’re out of your league. Tryouts for the majors start next month.
llpoh
January 28, 2014 10:02 pm
I was about to say that best evidence seems to point to 1993 as the year Seeger finally acknowledged his fuck up in backing Stalin.
The fifties is bullshit, unless Stuck has uncovered some buried tidbits somewhere that the internet is hiding as though they are gold nuggets.
Iska Waran
January 28, 2014 10:19 pm
If Seeger didn’t want a Stalin-style communist government in the US, I wonder whose style he did want. Mao style? Castro style? Kim il Sung style? Ceausescu style? Pol Pot style? He had so many heroes to choose from.
SSS
January 28, 2014 10:26 pm
@ Admin
Your blind dismissal of history and use of red herrings on the issue of Pete Seeger is a stunning sight to behold.
The Berlin blockade and Iron Curtain of 1948? Seeger was 28. Mao’s takeover of China in 1949? Seeger was 29. The North Korean invasion of the south in 1950? Seeger was 30. The denouncement of Stalin by the Soviets and the Hungarian Revolution in 1956? Seeger was 36. The Berlin Wall construction in 1961? Seeger was 41. The Czech Revolution in 1968? Seeger was 48. Not a fucking peep from Seeger. None. Want me to go on? Easy peesy.
As for your assertion that Seeger “drifted away” from communism in the 1940s, prove it. He simply did not, ever. Furthermore, this discussion has nothing to do with Aldous Huxley, the CIA, drug wars, George Orwell, John Steinbeck or any other red herring you want to toss in the roadway. It’s about Pete Seeger.
YOU posted the “RIP Pete Seeger” article and included a feel-good song this stupid shit sang. So continue to defend him at your peril. You will lose.
Orwell and Steinbeck were under surveillance by the US government. They were communists in your eyes. Were they blithering idiots?
I posted RIP and a video. It was you hate mongering idiots who started the bullshit about communism. The great red herring used to keep America at war for fifty years and to keep you getting paid by the government until you switched boogeymen to the war on drugs.
Now you idiots are afraid of Muslims. What will be your next boogeyman.
You morons blame a folk singer for what dictators did in foreign countries.
You people are hysterical in your vitriolic hate for good people.
SSS – Your research skills are a disgrace to the CIA. Put your dunce cap on old man.
In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the Young Communist League (YCL), then at the height of its popularity and influence. In 1942 he became a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) itself. He eventually “drifted away” (his words) from the Party in the late 1940s and 1950s.[60]
He later commented “Innocently I became a member of the Communist Party, and when they said fight for peace, I did, and when they said fight Hitler, I did. I got out in ’49, though…. I should have left much earlier. It was stupid of me not to. My father had got out in ’38, when he read the testimony of the trials in Moscow, and he could tell they were forced confessions. We never talked about it, though, and I didn’t examine closely enough what was going on…. I thought Stalin was the brave secretary Stalin, and had no idea how cruel a leader he was.” Wilkinson, “The Protest Singer” (2006), p. 52; see also The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait (2009), p. 114.
Did you boobs know that Seeger fought in World War II?
How could they let an evil Stalin loving communist fight against Hitler?
Oh yeah, Stalin was fighting Hitler too.
Iska, bb, SSS, Zelda – I’m guessing you would have fought for the Germans. Is that correct? They were anti-communist too.
Come out and play all you anti-communist revisionist history wiki experts.
I love kicking the shit out of you.
Zarathustra
January 28, 2014 10:36 pm
Fuck you, SSS. Seeger was 21 when Roosevelt baited the Japanese into bombing Pearl Harbor and initiating US involvement in the war. A war in which he opposed on principle, as his dad did WW1. Go ahead, blame the peacemakers and conscientious objectors; it’s the american way.
bb
January 28, 2014 11:03 pm
You are right admin,..who is a blithering idiot is in the eye of the beholder…Anyone who can’t or want see what this man is and believes is a blithering idiot.I don’t understand how any of you can defend this man and at the same time curse Obama and his communism.These people all worshiper the same god of the all -mighty -state.They hate you and they hate this nation and they all believe what Seeger has believed all his life.Good grief.
Sweet irony. I wonder how many sheeple back then thought he was serious and not sarcastic.
Bob.
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Beautiful song.
Why are we deducting 1050lbs for a tare and what the hell is a tare? Looks like they were worried about climate change even in 1895!
Bob.
What Did You Learn in School Today?
Words and Music by Tom Paxton
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that Washington never told a lie.
I learned that soldiers seldom die.
I learned that everybody’s free.
And that’s what the teacher said to me.
That’s what I learned in school today.
That’s what I learned in school.
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that policemen are my friends.
I learned that justice never ends.
I learned that murderers die for their crimes.
Even if we make a mistake sometimes.
That’s what I learned in school today.
That’s what I learned in school.
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned our government must be strong.
It’s always right and never wrong.
Our leaders are the finest men.
And we elect them again and again.
That’s what I learned in school today.
That’s what I learned in school.
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that war is not so bad.
I learned of the great ones we have had.
We fought in Germany and in France.
And some day I might get my chance.
That’s what I learned in school today.
That’s what I learned in school.
Stalin’s songbird. Oh sure, he eventually repudiated Stalin, after defending him had become impossible. He was one of those who pined for real, pure, humanist communism – oblivious (or better, impervious) to the fact that the benign communism he dreamed of never existed anywhere on the planet. People on this site bemoan progressive income tax as theft, but Seeger would have stolen all of the fruits of everyone’s labor. People like him are a big part of why we got the Great Society and the Immigration Act of 1965. We rightly see Martin Luther King’s call for a guaranteed income as a recipe for indolence and social breakdown. Is there any question where Pete Seeger would have come down on that question. Every government policy that created the Thirty Blocks of Squalor was a leftist invention. Just because he called out some hypocrisy and rejected jingoistic patriotism doesn’t mean he wasn’t, on balance, a malevolent influence.
Bob, “tare” is the weight of the object holding the product. So, when I sell a bushel of apples, I need to allow for the tare, or the weight of the crate the apples are in. If I have a newer scale, I can put the empty crate on the scale, hit the tare function, and it zeroes out the scale even though the crate is still on it. Then I add 40 lbs of apples to the crate to make 1 bushel. (Note: bushel is actually a volumetric measure, but everyone uses weight these days)
The wheat example above tells you the tare weight (the wagon), so you can figure out how much actual wheat there is.
Pete Seeger , June Carter and Johny Cash:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GDBtrzka2X4
Thanks Iska. In Somali it means hello
Thinker I was thinking that may be it ,but I had never heard of it. We did the same thing scrapping steal, we had to have the registered weight of the truck so as to accurately determine the amount of scrap we were paid for.That was a fun summer, spent the whole time with a blow torch cutting steal beams. Hot summer fun.
Bob.
Stalin’s songbird:
Seeger was a prominent campaigner in the struggle for African-American civil rights, and his legacy there ought be applauded. But racial equality was not the only cause to which Seeger committed himself. International communism, and in particular its Stalinist variant, was an equal, if not more, significant cause in Seeger’s public life. He was “Stalin’s songbird,” as David Boaz describes, writing about how Seeger zigged and zagged, with the rest of American communists in the 1930′s and 1940′s, in blind obedience to orders from Moscow. Seeger’s vaunted opposition to American “militarism” has persuaded him to oppose U.S. military intervention wherever and whenever it has occurred, including, for instance, the mission to displace the Taliban.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2009/01/21/seegers-stalinism/
Bob.
Seeger was 10 years old in 1930. Sounds like a little exaggeration on Boaz’ part. Was he blindly following Moscow’s orders as a teenager. Laughable.
Sounds like a Neo-con using propaganda to discredit an anti-military foe.
Sorry Iska, got my threads mixed up, need to stop drinking in the morning.
Bob.
It doesn’t sound at all like exaggeration on Boaz’ part. Seeger’s defense of Stalinism was clear. In the wiki entry for Seeger he’s quoted as admitting (in the context of of the rise of Solidarity) that he should apologize for his defense of Stalin and for merely considering him a “hard charger”. I think you have Seeger’s hammer, Admin, and you’re looking for the nail of of neoconservatism. Not everything is about neoconservatism circa 2014. The communists actually were trying to take over the world. History is pretty clear on that. Plus, are we not supposed to notice that Seeger’s music sucked balls? The lesbians nuns made us sing that stupid hammer song in the ’70’s. It was part of the same left wing indoctrination that today has kids watching An Inconvenient Truth. When you drive through The Squalor, you can thank Seeger.
Iska
I read Boaz’ screed. All hot air and not much substance. Blaming an anti-war folk singer for the 30 blocks of squalor is a real reach. Keep trying though. I’m sure you’re convincing everyone Seeger was a communist. I guess McCarthy is your hero.
Loved Pete Seeger. More truth in that 2 minutes than in a month of newscasts.
How many people know the Bolshevik Revolution was financed by the US Treasury?
I just finished reading http://www.xat.org/xat/moneyhistory.html
BostonBob, quoting anything from Commentary, a prime neocon fishwrap, is laughable. The neocons love to pin the commie (or anti-semite) label on all of their enemies but they don’t like have light shined on their commie, perpetual global revolution, Trotskyite origins.
Z,
I agree with you, I was just pointing out where the Stalin’s Songbird came from. It is funny when you listen to the song how many TBP themes are highlighted. Who would have thought that it would get this bad way back then when they thought is was so unfair. I remember many of the earthy, crunchy types, as we called them and their silly folk music, we loved our rock. We had to learn many of these songs on grade school, early indoctrination. Maybe they were not as crazy as many of us thought back then.
Bob.
Seeger was a complex man. Lots of data points to choose from both those who like him, and those who do not. That’s to be expected when you live for 90+ years.
Pete Seeger Positives
—-1) He was never a big star and he didn’t care. He believed the song was more important than the singer.
—-2) Summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955. I like anyone the government doesn’t!
—-3) Stayed true to his beliefs his entire life even at great personal cost. I don’t agree with all his views – not at all – but I have to admire his integrity, and even humility.
Pete Seeger Negatives
—-1) He sang at Oreos inauguration.
—-2) His song “We Shall Overcome” ….. I hate it.
—-3) He was /is a lifelong communist, albeit with a lowercase “c”. Until a few years ago, along with Noam Chomsky he served on the advisory board for Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism …. a splinter group of the Communist Party USA.
Stuck, Did I convince you he was a communist or did you convince yourself?
Stuck
Did you come across Pete Seeger’s master plan to create the 30 Blocks of Squalor?
I think the Vietnam War was to rid the world of those nasty communists too. Come to think of it, so was the Korean War. Come to think of it, so was the Bay of Pigs.
Those dreaded communists were everywhere. Who knew they were singing folk songs too.
Iska
I want to hear your opinion of Senator McCarthy. Was he just a misunderstood patriot?
Seeger was a Red Diaper Doper of the first order. The only thing he ever got right was oposition to the Vietnam War and that was for all the wrong reasons. His music also sucked -Fuck him.
“Stuck, Did I convince you he was a communist or did you convince yourself?” — Iska Waran
Neither. Seeger himself admits it. Your connection to 30 Blocks of Squalor is quite a stretch.
Admin, I love all anti-war songs, regardless of the source.
I wasn’t in school today; but I learned that it’s cheaper to give a homeless person an apartment and a caseworker than to keep locking them up in jail: http://www.nationofchange.org/utah-ending-homelessness-giving-people-homes-1390056183
In eight years, Utah has quietly reduced homelessness by 78 percent, and is on track to end homelessness by 2015.
How did Utah accomplish this? Simple. Utah solved homelessness by giving people homes. In 2005, Utah figured out that the annual cost of E.R. visits and jail stays for homeless people was about $16,670 per person, compared to $11,000 to provide each homeless person with an apartment and a social worker. So, the state began giving away apartments, with no strings attached. Each participant in Utah’s Housing First program also gets a caseworker to help them become self-sufficient, but they keep the apartment even if they fail. The program has been so successful that other states are hoping to achieve similar results with programs modeled on Utah’s.
It sounds like Utah borrowed a page from Homes Not Handcuffs, the 2009 report by The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and The National Coalition for the Homeless. Using a 2004 survey and anecdotal evidence from activists, the report concluded that permanent housing for the homeless is cheaper than criminalization. Housing is not only more human, it’s economical.
I’m not really fully up to speed on Joe McCarthy. Know more about Gene. From what I’ve seen/heard (which is all probably distilled by PBS & Bill Moyers), he went after people in a paranoid fashion, hauling them before his HUAC committee and yelling at them like Vincent D’Onofrio in Law & Order until they confessed. I don’t know if he used D’Onofrio’s tip-your-head-sideways technique. So I can’t call him a patriot because of his abusive tactics. On the other hand, it is internally contradictory for someone to expect and demand fair treatment while they advance an ideology that only pays lip service to human rights. Militant Islam (is there any other kind?), for example, demands diversity and co-existence up to the point when they gain a majority of a given population, at which point they shift to dhimmitude & jizya for kafirs. Same thing with communists. By the ’50’s it should have been clear that real-world communism didn’t countenance democracy, free speech, free association, etc. Did that excuse McCarthy’s extremism? No. Does it make communists hypocritical for attacking McCarthy’s anti-democratic tactics? Yes. Again, I’m not a neocon. I’m a paleocon. I’m for staying out of all wars and bringing the troops home from everywhere. But just because Seeger was against wars that deserved opposing doesn’t mean that his overall prescription of communism wasn’t bad. In Googling Seeger a few minutes ago, I stumbled across this comment on FreeRepublic: “Too bad he was a Communist. Communists aren’t bad people, unless you express a desire for freedom. Then they want to kill you…”
So Pete Seeger wanted to kill people who didn’t agree with him?
The more you type, the crazier you sound.
You’ve got one dude who wrote an article about Seeger as your entire wiki assault against a folk singer who was against all of the illegal US wars since the 1950s.
I also read that he hated Hitler. OMG. What a crazy dangerous communist.
This entire thread of bullshit is laughable. It sounds like the neo-cons and their bullshit about terrorist Muslims lurking everywhere.
Connecting Seeger to the Squalor isn’t quite a stretch. It’s just a little stretch. Hardly a stretch at all. From each according to his ability. To each according to his needs. Take from Llpoh. Give to FSA. Threaten with hammer as necessary.
1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don’t hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. Clean up your own mess
6. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
7. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
8. Wash your hands before you eat.
9. Flush.
10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
11. Live a balanced life – learn some, drink some, draw some, paint some, sing dance and play, and work everyday some.
12. Take a nap every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
14. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Stryrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why. We are all like that.
15. Goldfish, hamsters, white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
Above from the book “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”
This thread blows. Who the fuck cares what Pete Seeger’s ideology was about? Looking at his bio, his dad was a pacifist too. The OP is an awesome song that is truer today than it was 50 years ago. Anyone who doesn’t think Seeger made positive contributions to our culture is an idiot who can kiss my ass.
Good point. It’s not like popular culture advances a political or social agenda or anything…
Wake up, Seeger was no pacifist. He actively supported the Comunists during the Spanish civil war. This dipshit is a classic Koolaid drinker, he thinks communism is the answer, but all the implementers were wrong.( Stalin , mao etc.)
Zelda
Are you a fucking idiot? He was 16 years old during the Spanish civil war.
You people really like to stick to your story, no matter how fucking idiotic.
Hmm. Good old Pete was against corporate interests leading us into WWII. He was against going to war in order to benefit JP Morgan. He sounds really subversive. That’s funny, he sounds like 80% of the TBP commentors, except he was saying it 74 years ago.
In the spring of 1941, the twenty-one-year-old Seeger performed as a member of the Almanac Singers along with Millard Lampell, Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Butch and Bess Lomax Hawes, and Lee Hays. Seeger and the Almanacs cut several albums of 78s on Keynote and other labels, Songs for John Doe (recorded in late February or March and released in May 1941), the Talking Union, and an album each of sea chanteys and pioneer songs. Written by Millard Lampell, Songs for John Doe was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Hays, joined by Josh White and Sam Gary. It contained lines such as, “It wouldn’t be much thrill to die for Du Pont in Brazil,” that were sharply critical of Roosevelt’s unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in September 1940). This anti-war/anti-draft tone reflected the Communist Party line after the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which maintained the war was “phony” and a mere pretext for big American corporations to get Hitler to attack Soviet Russia. Seeger has said he believed this line of argument at the time—as did many fellow members of the Young Communist League (YCL). Though nominally members of the Popular Front, which was allied with Roosevelt and more moderate liberals, the YCL’s members still smarted from Roosevelt and Churchill’s arms embargo to Loyalist Spain (which Roosevelt later called a mistake),[60] and the alliance frayed in the confusing welter of events.
Admin , I know you claim to be a CPA , but commrade Seeger was 17 at the start of the war in 1936. Most US battalions were composed of volunteers aged 17 – 20. Incidently the war ended in spring of 1939.
Zelda
You dumbasses continually tell me how fucking stupid teenagers are, but now you idiots are trying to convince people that Pete Seeger was a dangerous flaming red communist at the age of 17 who wanted a Stalin like government in the U.S.
Keep digging deeper. I’m laughing my ass off at your drivel and outlandish bullshit.
Admin is a CPA, numbnuts. I worked with him. He’s almost as good a one as me. :*)
@ Admin
I’m with Iska and Zelda on this one. Seeger not only bought into communist doctrine hook line and sinker, he did it for ALL of his adult life, and he spent most of his life defending one of the most evil genocidal murderers in human history, Josef Stalin.
Even the New York Times noted that Seeger criticized Stalin “as early as 1993.” My, oh my, Seeger was a youthful 73 years old before the light came on. I think it was about 1956 when Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin in a secret speech. Seeger was so fucking dense that it took him another 37 years to agree with Stalin’s successor!!!!
In closing, I accept your apology for your foolish defense of this blithering idiot.
SSS
Keep reminiscing about the good old days when the CIA murdered heads of state in the name of fighting communism. I love those stories. Read your wiki page for comprehension. He drifted away from communism in the 1940s.
Now let’s hear your bullshit about the socialist George Orwell and that awful communist John Steinbeck. They must be classified as blithering idiots in your book. Right bucko?
You idiots are endlessly entertaining with your drivel.
Zara nails it. You assholes are great at judging others when you have a beam in your eye.
SSS
Tell us about Aldous Huxley being a blithering idiot because he did illegal drugs. We all know how you won the Drug War when you were done defeating communism.
Please reveal more blithering idiots, so I can make sure I read everything they wrote.
Blithering idiots is in the eye of the beholder.
Some days I realize how many truly blithering idiots I attract to TBP.
“Seeger was a complex man.”
—-Stucky
No, he wasn’t. How “complex” is a human being who for most of his life adamantly defends a mass murderer like Josef Stalin. I have another adjective for Seeger. Stupid. And I’m being polite.
“but I have to admire his (Seeger’s) integrity”
—-Stucky
Are you fucking serious? Look up the definition of integrity. Then refer to my comment above.
SSS, Do Seeger’s songs and their lyrics reflect a promotion of Stalinism? How about the one he performed in the video Admin posted?
Truth is truth. I will accept, laud and embrace the truth whether it comes from a Libertarian, a Commie, a Nazi, a Statist, a Liberal, a Paleocon, an Anarchist or a Neocon (okay scratch neocons, every one of them spews nothing but lies).
Seeger is a hero in my book. He spent his life preaching through his music peace, justice and freedom. I may not see any of them in exactly the same way, but that’s enough for me.
matslinger-I’ll give you credit for that 1895 test-but you time travel one of those 8th graders to today and he might be smart as a whip on grammar and math and history, but he wouldn’t be able to talk to a girl, figure out a cell phone, program a VCR, turn on a computer, drive a car, cheat on his final exam, make a bong, calculate the value of his weed if 50% of it turns out to be seeds and stems, update his facebook, or tweet about how lame 1895 was. Plus, those big boondocker shoes, filthy coveralls, and wool shirt wouldn’t help him get an edge when he tries to court one of those lovely goth or emo girls…
Pete Seeger, RIP:
He is /was a communist POS .He was/is a traitor to America.At least McCarthy knew the G-*damn enemy when he saw one and they are still the enemy to anyone with a brain.Who’s doing their best to destroy what’s left of America.?Admin you want to take a guess ?People just like
Seeger.Who’s destroying any future your children will have,?People just like Seeger..Admin ,you call
Me an idiot but at least I’m not a G -damn useful idiot like Seeger.God,sometimes you really get on my
Nerves.
“Integrity is a concept of CONSISTENCY of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes.” ……………………. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity
In 1940, Seeger, along with Woody Guthrie formed the Almanac Singers — a folk music group which dealt with such themes as pacifism, labor unions, and the alleged mistreatment of workers by employers and the U.S. government alike.
In 1956 Seeger was indicted for contempt of Congress because of his evasive answers regarding his ties to Communism ……… in 1962 his conviction was overturned on a technicality.
In the 1960s Seeger was deeply involved in the civil rights movement and its hallmark demonstrations.
In the early 1970’s he protested the Vietnam War.
In 1980’s he opposed the U.S. military campaigns and weapons buildup during the Reagan years of the Cold War.
In 1995 Seeger did say he was still a communist …. “I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.”
In 2002 Seeger was a signatory to the “Statement of Conscience” …… a document that condemned not only the Bush administration’s “stark new measures of repression,” but also its “unjust, immoral, illegitimate, [and] openly imperial policy towards the world.”
In 2004 in an interview with Mother Jones magazine Seeger said ——- “I’m still a communist, in the sense that I don’t believe the world will survive with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.”
—————————————— –
So, SSS, would you say Seeger is pretty consistent? He fits the very definition of ‘integrity’.
I’m not sure why you hate him so much. It seems you’re not able to separate Good Seeger from Bad Seeger, so you just say “fuckit, let’s crucify him”. That’s an old CIA trick, isn’t it?
“How “complex” is a human being who for most of his life adamantly defends a mass murderer like Josef Stalin. ” —————– SSS
Why are you such a fucking liar?? You know goddamned well and sure that Seeger renounced that shit in the 1950s. Even apologized for it.
I guess you make shit up to build your case? You know what that means? You have NO integrity. Look it up.
So, SSS, would you say Seeger is pretty consistent? He fits the very definition of ‘integrity’.
I’m not sure why you hate him so much. It seems you’re not able to separate Good Seeger from Bad Seeger, so you just say “fuckit, let’s crucify him”.
—-Stucky
I don’t hate Pete Seeger, as you assert, nor do I want to crucify him, as you assert. Stop trying to put words in my mouth.
I simply said he was a stupid human being, totally incapable of seeing or accepting what was plain as day for most of his adult life. His consistent support of the Soviet Union and Josef Stalin is NOT integrity, it’s stupidity. Get it?
Stuck – please provide source material for that statement. I cannot find it anywhere. Plus he did visit Russia in the sixties and did much later express regret that he did not ask to see the gulags when he was there. He left the Communist party in the fifties, but from what I can see he renounced Stalin much later than that.
Your source for that info, please.
“Mr. Radosh, who once studied banjo with Mr. Seeger, said in an interview that he had idolized him, but he has become a dogged critic of Mr. Seeger’s politics. Mr. Radosh wrote that he was “deeply moved” that the singer, “now in his late 80s, had decided to acknowledge what had been his major blind spot opposing social injustice in America while supporting the most tyrannical of regimes abroad.”
But in fact, Mr. Seeger, 87, made such statements years ago, at least as early as his 1993 book, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” In the book, he said in a 1995 interview with The New York Times Magazine, he had apologized “for following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader.”
I do not see anywhere where Seeger renounced Stalin in the fifties. Quite the contrary.
I am going to go out on a limb here and call bullshit.
I challenge anyone to provide evidence that Seeger renounced Stalin and apologized for support of him in the fifties. I have done a fairly lengthy search, and I can find no such evidence or report. Quite the contrary – everything points to Seeger finally saying he made a mistake late in his life, but not prior to that.
Whatever else he did or did not do, his support for Stalin was ill advised indeed. I have read a few interviews from folks that knew him that suggest that he was well-intentioned but prone to making severe errors in judgement.
seeger is before my time, sorry
Hey you dumb ass , I’m the only one you can call.a blithering idiot.Leave every one else alone.
“How “complex” is a human being who for most of his life adamantly defends a mass murderer like Josef Stalin. ” —————– SSS
“Why are you such a fucking liar?? You know goddamned well and sure that Seeger renounced that shit in the 1950s. Even apologized for it.”
—-Stucky
On this subject, you’re not only an intellectual lightweight, but a god damned propagandist, Stucky. Give it up. Seeger NEVER renounced a fucking thing in the 1950s. In addition to the smash greeted upon you by Llpoh, feast on this, which backs 100% what I said about Seeger.
In the late 1980s Seeger also expressed disapproval of violent revolutions, remarking to an interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change and that “the most lasting revolutions are those that take place over a period of time.” In his autobiography “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” (1993, 1997, reissued in 2009), Seeger wrote, “Should I apologize for all this? I think so.”
Great. Revolution in Hungary in 1956? Seeger disapproves. Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1968? Seeger disapproves.
Oh, did you note WHEN Seeger finally sees the light, just as I said? 1993. Take a fucking hike, Stucky. You’re out of your league. Tryouts for the majors start next month.
I was about to say that best evidence seems to point to 1993 as the year Seeger finally acknowledged his fuck up in backing Stalin.
The fifties is bullshit, unless Stuck has uncovered some buried tidbits somewhere that the internet is hiding as though they are gold nuggets.
If Seeger didn’t want a Stalin-style communist government in the US, I wonder whose style he did want. Mao style? Castro style? Kim il Sung style? Ceausescu style? Pol Pot style? He had so many heroes to choose from.
@ Admin
Your blind dismissal of history and use of red herrings on the issue of Pete Seeger is a stunning sight to behold.
The Berlin blockade and Iron Curtain of 1948? Seeger was 28. Mao’s takeover of China in 1949? Seeger was 29. The North Korean invasion of the south in 1950? Seeger was 30. The denouncement of Stalin by the Soviets and the Hungarian Revolution in 1956? Seeger was 36. The Berlin Wall construction in 1961? Seeger was 41. The Czech Revolution in 1968? Seeger was 48. Not a fucking peep from Seeger. None. Want me to go on? Easy peesy.
As for your assertion that Seeger “drifted away” from communism in the 1940s, prove it. He simply did not, ever. Furthermore, this discussion has nothing to do with Aldous Huxley, the CIA, drug wars, George Orwell, John Steinbeck or any other red herring you want to toss in the roadway. It’s about Pete Seeger.
YOU posted the “RIP Pete Seeger” article and included a feel-good song this stupid shit sang. So continue to defend him at your peril. You will lose.
SSS
Orwell and Steinbeck were under surveillance by the US government. They were communists in your eyes. Were they blithering idiots?
I posted RIP and a video. It was you hate mongering idiots who started the bullshit about communism. The great red herring used to keep America at war for fifty years and to keep you getting paid by the government until you switched boogeymen to the war on drugs.
Now you idiots are afraid of Muslims. What will be your next boogeyman.
You morons blame a folk singer for what dictators did in foreign countries.
You people are hysterical in your vitriolic hate for good people.
The beam in your eyes are massive.
SSS – Your research skills are a disgrace to the CIA. Put your dunce cap on old man.
In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the Young Communist League (YCL), then at the height of its popularity and influence. In 1942 he became a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) itself. He eventually “drifted away” (his words) from the Party in the late 1940s and 1950s.[60]
He later commented “Innocently I became a member of the Communist Party, and when they said fight for peace, I did, and when they said fight Hitler, I did. I got out in ’49, though…. I should have left much earlier. It was stupid of me not to. My father had got out in ’38, when he read the testimony of the trials in Moscow, and he could tell they were forced confessions. We never talked about it, though, and I didn’t examine closely enough what was going on…. I thought Stalin was the brave secretary Stalin, and had no idea how cruel a leader he was.” Wilkinson, “The Protest Singer” (2006), p. 52; see also The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait (2009), p. 114.
Did you boobs know that Seeger fought in World War II?
How could they let an evil Stalin loving communist fight against Hitler?
Oh yeah, Stalin was fighting Hitler too.
Iska, bb, SSS, Zelda – I’m guessing you would have fought for the Germans. Is that correct? They were anti-communist too.
Come out and play all you anti-communist revisionist history wiki experts.
I love kicking the shit out of you.
Fuck you, SSS. Seeger was 21 when Roosevelt baited the Japanese into bombing Pearl Harbor and initiating US involvement in the war. A war in which he opposed on principle, as his dad did WW1. Go ahead, blame the peacemakers and conscientious objectors; it’s the american way.
You are right admin,..who is a blithering idiot is in the eye of the beholder…Anyone who can’t or want see what this man is and believes is a blithering idiot.I don’t understand how any of you can defend this man and at the same time curse Obama and his communism.These people all worshiper the same god of the all -mighty -state.They hate you and they hate this nation and they all believe what Seeger has believed all his life.Good grief.
bb
Why do you even comment? To prove you’re a blithering idiot and to confirm your TBP village idiot status?
Anyone on this thread who sees they are the same side as you should really have 2nd thoughts about their position.
TBP is filled with hateful motherfuckers who love to judge others based on their 10 minutes of wikipedia research.
Laughable.