From Rocky Mountain News:
[US country singer Merle] Haggard, 69, talking to Rocky music writer Mark Brown from his home in Redding, Calif., continues to be the outlaw and renegade, a quality that has taken him to both jail and the top of the charts. …
*Your song America First came out against the war in Iraq without sounding unpatriotic.
“I think it’s pretty well agreed upon that I am an American.
My family history and my actions and my relatives who fought in previous wars, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam.
I’ve had grandchildren and brothers and cousins (serve).
I tried to get in but I was too young. I wound up going to jail for trying to get in the Army.
I think it’s a well-known fact that Merle Haggard is a red, white and blue American.
There are a lot of red, white and blue Americans who don’t believe in what we’re doing now, don’t believe we’re being told the truth.
We’re being told the truth after the fact because they get caught in their damn lies.
It’s a terrible time, politically, for America.
That Merle Haggard, during the Vietnam war seen as supporting that war, now opposes the Iraq war says quite something on George W. Bush.
Ron Glasser on Vietnam and Iraq wars: here.
Country music and the Iraq war: here.
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- Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard to perform in Tuscaloosa (10/24/13) (stillisstillmoving.com)
- US involvement in the Iran-Iraq war: ‘This information is not so new’ – expert (voiceofrussia.com)
- Merle Haggard (jimstunes.wordpress.com)
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Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Merle was never the red neck many people thought he was. He’s always been a populist and a defender of the outcast. Someone asked him why he wrote “Okie From Muskogee”. He said something to the effect that “There were a lot of people back then who thought they were better than us.” He was speaking for an old rural American tradition that probably has it’s roots in the English Civil War. As my friend, the late Jim Hurd used to put it, “It doesn’t matter who you are, there’s no one all that much better than you… No one all that much worse either.” He claimed to have learned that from his mother, a country girl from Kentucky.
Oddly enough, when I read your post, I was listening to the big Merle Haggard retrospective collection, “Down Every Road.”
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Thanks Jon.
Merle Haggard lyrics are here.
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Sixties activitist sees Iraq-Vietnam link
KENT, Ohio, May 4 (UPI) — Political activist Tom Hayden told an Ohio audience America’s reluctance to pull out of Iraq may have something do with the turbulence of the 1960s.
Speaking to students at Kent State University, Hayden said despite large opposition to the Iraq war, the aftermath of the Vietnam War impacts our thinking, The Daily Kent Stater reported.
“We’re in the formative stages of defining and embracing a new narrative of American history thanks to the ’60s,” he said. “This turbulence in the American consciousness is a sign of people coming to terms with our past and where we are.”
A founding member of the political organization Students for a Democratic Society, Hayden spoke on the eve of the 37th anniversary of the May 4, 1970, Kent State shootings. National Guardsmen patrolling the campus shot at students, killing four and injuring nine.
He said as the nation nears the 50th anniversary of the 60s generation, it is important that we recognize the impact of social movements.
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