More Peace Music: White Flag Warrior

In Put Your Hands Up In The Air For Peace!, I noted a recent song, “Peace,” by the Luminaries, and other classic pro-peace songs (clips re-posted below). Libertarian philosopher Geoffrey Plauché notes a recent pro-peace video in his post White Flag Warrior:

There’s a new anti-war rock/hip-hop song hitting the air waves lately. It is called White Flag Warrior, from the album Survival Story, by Flobots and featuring Tim McIlrath of the punk rock band Rise Against. It’s a catchy tune with good lyrics, melding both rock and hip hop elements. The song has a strong non-violent resistance tinge to it. The oft repeated line that “we’d rather make our children martyrs than murderers” reminds me of the Socratic position that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it — truly libertarian sentiments.

Lyrics

We request to negotiate
We come to you unarmed
We desire to communicate
You cannot do us harm

They want sacrifice
They hatch schemes and ask me to follow their path to the afterlife

I’ve got an appetite
For nice things and pipe dreams that my enemies could be blasted by

New metaphors
View that are better for you can’t survive if I’m your competitor

Rise together or fight separate wars
I pray I’m never forced to be a predator

Spectres spectate
We wont last
They glad to hate
When gladiators
Breathe their last
Scream en masse
When the dreams do clash
Like the swords in the wars
Let me bleed on that
But they feed on that
Say we need strong backs
Call us weak
If we don’t redeem contracts
But the feast wont last
When this beast attacks
The sons and the fathers
Will be free at last

This is love this is not treason

They see sharks in the estuary
They claim the arc’s Bartholomew’s
They say war is necessary
But we say war is child abuse

We’d rather make our children martyrs than murderers
We’d rather make our children White Flag Warriors

Core-to-core
Were the ones
We’ve been waiting for
We hold steady
Steadier than stevedores
Not tevias or matadors
On matters of what came before
Forgive the debts
To settle scores
Test the mettle
Either ore
Whats your plan got to do with me
If the bell tolls let freedom ring
And find new ways if we must be King
Instead of leading the young to our suffering

We pass testaments down scream back at heaven
For testing us like Wednesdays at eleven
Wanna recruit and train us to act evilly?
Save it for the shooting range and smack DVDs
Won’t study war no more this millennium
It’s never again to me or anyone
So think harder when you refer to us
Rather make our children martyrs than murderers

They shell dwellings to quell the shelling
They lift taboos to seduce the cowards
They say we’re too yellow-bellied
But we say we’re the new superpower

We seek waivers to not be liable
We claim to speak for a higher truth
We stand opposed to the homicidal
We tell you you’re fireproof

***

Some of the others mentioned above are here: first, the wonderful video and song “Peace,” by the Luminaries, which premiered at the Elevate Film Festival 2008 (see The Peace Project).

P.O.D.’s “Tell Me Why”:

Another reader suggested “another artist who I feel has been extraordinarily dedicated to the message of peace. Michael Franti has actually travelled to Iraq, Israel, Palestine, and elsewhere in the Middle East and created a documentary called I Know I’m Not Alone on his trip, where he basically travelled all over Iraq, staying with families, playing music on street corners (and even at bars filled with U.S. soldiers, singing a song that goes “You can bomb the world to pieces, but you can’t bomb it into peace”), and just talking to people about the human cost of war. He also runs an annual Bay Area music festival called Power to the Peaceful. He has many great songs, but one of my favorites (and apparently his most popular music video on Youtube) is called It’s Time To Go Home”:

More or less explicitly libertarian/Austrian: Amy Allen’s “Revolution”; Neema V’s rap “I Own Myself”; and John Papola’s Hayek Keynes rap “Fear the Boom and Bust”:

[LRC]