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The Great Republic is fighting back


I awoke this morning with a song in my head of which I must have been dreaming. It was one of those by Irish singers which my mother had played in the car when I was young, and she was driving around Northamptonshire thinking of Donegal. In retrospect, many of those songs were radical American protest songs, and quite a few were by Woodie Guthrie--but when replayed and resung in Irish accents, they took on a republican tinge I have always admired.

The song of which I was thinking was one I couldn't quite place--Guthrie's 'Banks are Made of Marble', which I can't find on youtube. The chorus runs

Let's break out the banks of marble
With the Guard on every door
And share out the gold and silver
That the workers sweated for.

After that, I went down the Cromwell Road and gave a sort of lecture-cum-seminar on European politics. A bright American asked me at the end what I thought of the reformed Paulson plan, and I, trying to be responsible, said that I didn't like it, I thought that it was wrong, but that I thought that it would pass, but that it should not. I thought this because the media, the establishment, the banks, and the Washington elites were all behind it.

Wrong again, Meenagh. The American republic is not dead. The stupid media and the corrupt hacks might think they own the place, but it belongs still to its citizens and a good part of their representatives are scared of them. When all else is rejected, they are still capable of choosing the right thing.

In fact, the representatives either freshly elected or about to go into elections won't touch this kryptonite, however hysterical the reportage class. That's how much the voters hate it. Seven hundred billion dollars will not be given to insane bankers with no questions asked, not yet.

The great republic, for the first time in decades, perhaps for the first time since the death of Robert Kennedy on this scale, is fighting back. So I went looking for songs, and found this beautiful version of the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, sung in French by the incomparable Mireille Matthieu. The French touch is for any Republicans reading, even if I do know and like you. You'll thank your right wing for voting this monster down eventually.

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