Top 20 Merle Haggard Songs: The Fightin' Side of Me (#4)

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I continue through a way-too-brief look at what are my personal favorite Merle Haggard songs. We were talking about Merle last night after the Robbie Fulks show, and both steel player Pete Finney and bass player Todd Phillips agreed with my inclusion of Hag's cover of "No Time to Cry." On to number 4. #4: The Figthin' Side of Me Much like "Okie From Muskogee" and "Mama Tried," "The Fightin' Side of Me" is a song that is closely associated with Merle Haggard's career. And, much like "Okie From Muskogee," this song became an anthem of sorts, an "answer song" to all of the anti-war songs and anti-American sentiment that was prevalent in the late 60s. People who think it was great to be alive in the 60s because of the terrific music don't really know what it was like to be alive in the 60s. I remember the curfews and the riots after Reverend Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968. (For you trivia buffs, the only documented time that the legendary Grand Ole Opry program was ever canceled in its 90-year history was the Saturday after the King assassination, because of the riots. Does that sound like a fun time to be alive? ) There were protests against the ramping-up war in Vietnam all over college campuses. It was an ugly chapter in American history. Into that fray stepped the Poet of the Common Man with this anthem for the "Silent Majority," the people who supported the troops (not necessarily the war but the men who were sent to fight [remember, the soldiers don't start the wars, the politicians do...as Mel Tillis famously wrote in "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town," "It wasn't me that started that ol' crazy Asian war"]) and didn't like people using the freedoms that American take for granted (such as free speech) to trash the very country that gave them those freedoms. America isn't perfect, and I shake my head in complete disbelief at these people who think it is. One in five homeless Americans is one of those "fighting men" who "fought" for our freedoms, shackled by a bureaucratic system that's supposed to be helping them but instead goes out of its way to bog down their claims for disability and treatment. No, this country isn't perfect. But the way to improve it is, instead of "running down our country," is work to make it better. The song's message still resonates with me, not as some "redneck anthem" but as a genuine plea to stop complaining and fix what you can about this (or any other) country. The Fightin' Side of Me Written by Merle Haggard From The Fightin' Side of Me, 1970