“One century past, a people’s hope fulfilled”
One of the hallmarks of a bad government is that it will expand quite beyond the expected ills of ruining prosperity and liberty: it will also begin to infect culture. A sure sign of a sick society is songs that take quite too much of an interest in the machinery of the state. Take, for instance, North Korea’s lovely, “The Joy of Bumper Harvest Overflows Amidst the Song of Mechanisation.” The Maoists are a bit more blunt, churning out songs like, “Socialism is Good.” There are probably hundreds more of these propaganda paeans to government, and since they are usually found in distant lands, let us hope they are mostly untranslatable.
Distance and security allow us to view such artifacts of totalitarianism with amusement. American popular music should be assurance enough that our culture can produce music that is virtually content-free. (One can even become a “musician” without playing an instrument or singing a note.) Some might say our culture suffers from other maladies, but we are free from the cancer of totalitarianism.
But what is this? A polyp in the colon of the federal leviathan! My fellow Americans, our dear leaders have approved for our education the “Food and Drug Administration Centennial Anthem,” which, no joke, was recently performed at the FDA’s 100th birthday party by the “FDA Chorus and U.S. Public Health Service Wind Ensemble.” Seriously. There’s even video, in all its cacophonous horror.
The story is even more pathetic when we consider the Outer Party member who got an extra ration of chocolate for his labours:
“I just got to thinking about trying to express my feelings about my job with some words and music,” says Harris, who has worked at the FDA for 35 years . . .
For weeks, Harris sat in the corner of his basement, sometimes staying up until midnight after a full day of work. He used an electric keyboard hooked up to his computer to compose the anthem . . .
“It was fantastic!” the bespectacled Harris said after the singing ended. “I was really pretty filled with emotion that this was all happening.”
Others were also filled with emotion, though this roundup of reviews suggests they weren’t all elated (Acting Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach neatly dances around the implicit question of whether he enjoyed the anthem). (via Kerry Howley)
Hopefully, this is an isolated outbreak; I can’t imagine too many more bureaucratic dupes will be motivated to compose starry-eyed odes to their agencies, especially not ones with such a checkered past as the FDA: Todd Seavey gives sober consideration to the Libertarian bromide that the FDA has killed more people than it’s saved in this article. And thankfully, a score of government employees mumbling through wretched lyrics is still a long way from a thousand children clad in shiny pyjamas dancing and shouting hymns to the state.
As a sop to our progressive readers, I’ll note that propaganda songs have a private sector counterpart: the corporate anthem. But that, of course, is just another form of collectivism.
So, would Lee Greenwood and Toby Keith be evidence of culture infected by the State?
No, I think there’s a clear difference between patriotic songs, which honor the country, and propaganda songs, which honor the government.
Let the eagle soar…
Euuuuuuwwwwwwww! I don’t know which is worse: that the FDA has an anthem or that they have an “FDA Chorus and U.S. Public Health Service Wind Ensemble.”
The Toby Seavey article was an excellent read. A very balanced look at the issue.
“To flour was added chalk, clay, or plaster of paris…In examining brown sugar, researchers often found that a substantial portion of it was the carcasses of lice, together with some living ones.”
These examples, cited in the Seavey article, are clear-cut, textbook cases of fraud. As a minarchist, I have no problem at all with government punishing fraud. Indeed, I hope it does, because this is one of its few legitimate purposes. Mislabeling should be a crime, and for this reason alone, we should still have an FDA (hopefully minus the cheesy songs).
But that it will deny me the right to try experimental new drugs — drugs I know are risky — is unconscionable. Particularly if I’m dying of a fatal disease. (I’m not, but I’m just saying…)
Perhaps the FDA could be replaced with private mechanisms, probably involving a much more active role for trial lawyers, a solution almost as unacceptable to free marketeers as regulatory agencies but at least a private and decentralized one.
*shudder*
The current glut of Vioxx lawsuits should give anyone pause about letting trial lawyers be the arbiters of drug safety. To date, plaintiff’s attorneys have relied on emotional arguments, while juries have confessed to being oblivious to Merck’s scientific defenses. I’ll take a nerdy bureaucrat who spends his spare time writing musical tributes to his employer over a slick tort lawyer any day. (disclaimer: I work for Merck.)
In principle, I support the idea of terminally-ill people assuming the risk of taking experimental drugs. There are some complications to that scenario, but that’s beyond the scope of a comment thread.
Does Paul Oakenfold count as a musician?
Congress should form a comittee to look into this. Obviously we are far behind the North Koreans in the area of political song. Compare “The Joy of Bumper Harvest Overflows Amidst the Song of Mechanisation.” with “Food and Drug Administration Centennial Anthem” and the size of the gap is plain. Can’t help but wonder if “Joy of…” sings better in Korean.