That Boy’s Not Right: Songs Rand Paul should listen to, a lot

Rand Paul’s entire platform seems to be “questioning stuff reasonable people decided 50 years ago.” There was the whole Civil Rights Act thing, and now his apparent ignorance of Harlan County, Ky.’s importance is disturbing.

First of all, imagine if John Kerry, or Barack Obama, had made the mistake of placing “The Dukes of Hazzard”’s setting in Kentucky and not Georgia. We wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight for the cries of “ELITIST!!!!!!!” bellowing on the airwaves.

But I’m far more bothered by Paul’s obliviousness to Harlan’s labor history. Some of the bloodiest civil conflicts in U.S. history took place at coalfields in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Colorado. And I’m not talking about ancient history, either. Florence Reese, who wrote “Which Side are You On” on a calendar page while the sheriff waited outside to ambush her union organizer husband, only died in 1986, and that’s in a part of the country where we still name our kids after Civil War generals. Barbara Kopple directed “Harlan County, USA,” about a miner’s strike, only four years before I was born.

I get it – Paul is a libertarian who privileges the “free market” (a euphemism if ever there was one)* over the people working in that very free market. But many of those people gave their lives in Harlan County over the years, both in the mines and agitating to improve conditions in those mines. For Paul, the guy who wants Kentuckians to send him to D.C. to represent their interests, to be all, “Oh yeah, ‘Dukes of Hazzard’” is a slap in the face.

Of course, this is also the guy who thinks that blown-up mountains would make swell sports complexes. For elk and stuff (provided they don’t need clean water or anything).

And I’m not claiming that unions have a clean history. But I’d rather live in a world where workers can organize than one where bosses-cum-plantation masters get to make all the choices. And regardless of where you stand on organized labor, you can’t just pretend that it’s something a prospective U.S. Senator shouldn’t be vaguely aware of.

So, here’s a playlist for Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, with which he might begin the process of educating himself:
- Season One of “Justified,” just because
- The aforementioned “Which Side are You On” (Pete Seeger cover)
- “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” (Brad Paisley or Patty Loveless)
- “Sixteen Tons” (by Get a Frakking Clue, Rand Paul… just kidding, it’s Tennessee Ernie Ford) (Johnny Cash’s cover is awesome, of course.)
- “The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore” (this one’s Kathy Mattea, but June Carter Cash has a kick-ass version on one of the Oxford American Southern Samplers)

*My great-grandfather was a blacksmith in the copper mines of East Tennessee blackballed for taking part in a 1933 strike – so much for his freedom to market – finally employed steadily 10 years later by the New Deal-funded TVA. That’s right. A father of five kids was prevented from finding work by a private company for asking assurance not to die every day – not merely at that private company, but anywhere in town – until a massive federal program gave him a job building a dam in another state. So now you know a lot about me.