{"id":31778,"date":"2012-11-23T12:30:33","date_gmt":"2012-11-23T18:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=31778"},"modified":"2012-12-02T21:52:53","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T03:52:53","slug":"bruce-springsteen-is-americas-greatest-conservative-songwriter-part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=31778","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Springsteen Is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter, Part III: The Ties That Bind"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the song “Darlington County” (from\u00a0Born in the USA<\/em>), a couple of ne’er-do-wells drive south to find a little work and raise a little ruckus:<\/p>\n

Hey little girl standing on the corner,
\nTodays your lucky day for sure, all right.
\nMe and my buddy we’re from New York City,
\nwe got two hundred dollars, we want to rock all night.<\/p>\n

Girl you’re looking at two big spenders,
\nWhy the world don’t know what me and Wayne might do
\nOur pa’s each own one of the World Trade Centers,
\nFor a kiss and a smile I’ll give mine all to you…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the end of the song, we find out how it went:<\/p>\n

Driving out of darlington county
\nMy eyes seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
\nDriving out of darlington county
\nSeen Wayne handcuffed to the bumper of a state trooper’s Ford<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s comic trifle – the whole song is, really. \u00a0But it hints at a theme conservatives believe as a part of being conservative; that the world has an enduring moral order<\/strong>. \u00a0That there is a battle between right and wrong, Yin and Yang, good and evil – and that right and good are better, and should be exalted, or at least striven for.<\/p>\n

“Wayne” ran afoul that order – with comic results, unless you’re “Wayne”, I suppose.<\/p>\n

But it’s usually a lot deeper than that.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The existance of an enduring moral order is a key tenet of conservatism, notwithstanding that people just plain fall short of it, most of the time. \u00a0The battle with, and within, that order is a key theme in all conservative intellectual tradition. \u00a0And Springsteen’s discography is full of characters encountering that moral order, and often as not coming up wanting, but in any case wrestling with the consequences.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Nebraska\u00a0<\/em>album is jammed with these stories; the casually-demented Charlie Starkweather character in the title cut:<\/p>\n

They declared me unfit to live,
\nsaid into that great void my soul be hurled
\nThey ask me why I did what I did
\nWell sir I guess there’s just a meanness in this world<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Viewed purely on the surface – as many conservative non-fans make the mistake of doing – the line could be read as a nihilistic declaration; “the world’s an ugly place, what does a little spree killing matter?”.<\/p>\n

It’s just the opposite, though; the killer in\u00a0“<\/em>Nebraska” (like the similar character in “Johnny 99”, who kills a night clerk and demands the death penalty rather than 99 years in prison) runs smack\u00a0into\u00a0<\/em>the enduring moral order.<\/p>\n

And sometimes moral orders conflict, contradict and confuse. \u00a0And given that we have free will, sometimes we make choices that are wrong, or troubling and ambiguous – as “Joe Roberts” in the song “Highway Patrolman”<\/p>\n

WELL The night was like any other, I got a call ’bout quarter to nine
\nThere was trouble in a roadhouse out on the Michigan line
\nThere was a kid lyin’ on the floor lookin’ bad, bleedin’ hard from his head
\nthere was a girl cryin’ at a table,
\nit was Frank they said<\/p>\n

Well I went out and I jumped in my car,
\nand then I hit the lights.
\nI must of done 110 through Michigan County that night.
\nIt was out at the crossroads, head down around Willow bank
\nSeen a Buick with Ohio plates,
\nbehind the wheel was Frank<\/p>\n

Well I chased him through those county roads till a sign<\/p>\n

aid Canadian border 5 miles from here.
\nI pulled over the side of the highway and watched his taillights disappear<\/p>\n

Me and Franky laughin’ and drinkin’ nothin’ feels better than blood on blood
\nTakin’ turns dancin’ with Maria as the band played “Night of the Johnstown Flood”<\/p>\n

I catch him when he’s strayin’ like any brother would.
\nMan turns his back on his family well he just ain’t no good<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Patrollman Roberts just let his brother get away with assault – violating one moral order to uphold a different one. \u00a0Is he a better person for it? \u00a0The song lets the listener figure it out – and a conservative might well, and rightly, judge the Patrolman harshly…<\/p>\n

…but the point is that there\u00a0is\u00a0<\/em>a moral order – one with contradictions (you\u00a0should\u00a0<\/em>take care of \u00a0your family!) and contradictions (but not at the cost of violating the law, especially where others are hurt), and choices (Roberts certainly could have lit his brother up and hauled him to jail) that we, as frail, imperfect humans, get wrong (but he didn’t) and consequences, unstated and left as blanks for the listener to fill in…<\/p>\n

…pretty much as humans always do when butting heads with an enduring moral order that demands much and gives little in the way of leeway.<\/p>\n

Which is, of course, a fundamentally conservative way of looking at the world; the moral order ain’t easy, and most of us fall well short of it, and it’s through examining how we do that we, slowly and painfully, learn. \u00a0 Maybe.<\/p>\n

And you can play all the Barack Obama benefits you want – but that’s a theme that\u00a0should ,\u00a0<\/em>and usually does, resonate with conservatives.<\/p>\n

Coming up next – Springsteen and the principle of continuity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the song “Darlington County” (from\u00a0Born in the USA), a couple of ne’er-do-wells drive south to find a little work and raise a little ruckus: Hey little girl standing on the corner, Todays your lucky day for sure, all right. Me and my buddy we’re from New York City, we got two hundred dollars, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[240,172],"class_list":["post-31778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-music","tag-conservatism-and-springsteen","tag-springsteen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31778"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32179,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31778\/revisions\/32179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}