Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
The song assumes that serving in the military is something that one must try to avoid.
Not really. It's speaking about the inequity of some people avoiding it and putting the burden on others.
Yes. Burden. And a burden he specifically says he does not want. That's what the line "I ain't no military son" means. He does not believe in serving his country (admittedly in the context of the Vietnam war), and he does not like that he's being told he must by people who themselves have the power and connections to avoid responsibility.
If it were not for that third stanza, you'd have a point. If he wrote a line saying something about how he'll willingly do his part ("I *am* a military son"?), despite others shirking their duty, it would be about true service and patriotism in contrast to phony patriotism. But that's not the song he wrote. Pretending otherwise after the fact by ignoring lyrics, and more importantly ignoring decades of the songs meaning to those who heard it, is ridiculous.
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Likewise, the song isn't an attack against the notion of taxation but rather the idea that the wealthy would shirk paying their taxes.
Yes. But you'll note he didn't write a line about "I'm not a taxpayer's son". Had he done so, we would interpret the song to be anti-tax. But he didn't. He wrote about not being a military son. Hence, why the song is universally (until the last couple days) understood to be anti-military service.
Edited, Nov 13th 2014 12:44pm by gbaji