“I never feel good about putting an album or anything out unless there’s at least one song on there that I feel uncomfortable about – that makes me feel uncomfortable. Like if I wasn’t me and I heard me singin’ it, it would make me feel kinda creepy. And this is a song like that. It should make you feel uncomfortable. This is a song I wrote based on a bumper sticker that I read: it said, ‘I hate my government but I love my country.'”
-Introduction from a live performance in 1995
You know this town ain’t been the same
Since the hippies come through in ’69.
Since the Hollywood men
Landed on the Hollywood moon.
You know this town has gone to shame
Since the ACLU crossed the Mason/Dixon line.
And since George Wallace was shot down
By the Federal goons.
Chorus:
And I hate my government.
It’s overrun with the radicals
Who said they hated the government.
We got a radical for President
And so I hate my government
But I love my country.
Well when the Hippies were dirty,
When they committed free love and they grew their own food
They made me sick to my stomach
With the reek of Patchouli and their pussy folk songs.
But then the hippies turned thirty,
They dusted off their degrees with a new attitude.
And they bought up the downtown.
Now they’re runnin’ the schoolboard and runnin’ it wrong.
repeat chorus
Back in ’57 this town was like Heaven
And everyone livin’ here was white.
There were these little lawn jockeys and Chevys
And Fords and a military man in the chain of command.
Back in nineteen hundred and fifty-seven,
I could walk through the streets here at night.
Then I fought for my country for a couple of years.
Come back and there was a plague on this land.
repeat chorus
You know I listen to Limbaugh and I voted Perot
And still it aint turnin’ out right.
I remind all the Doctors who work at the clinic
That I never will give up God’s fight.
But when I see the President smilin’ so greasy
On the MTV channel at night,
Well I pick up the good book and pray to the good Lord
And I pray to the good Lord With all of my might.
I say, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd there’s plague on this land.
Everyone’s different, different than me and I just don’t understand.
Why don’t they go back to India, Israel, Africa. Europe and Asia. Japan.
Or the Island of Lesbos or San Damn Francisco.
You see this used to be be the Land of the Free
But everyone’s free except me.
I say My Country ‘Tis of Thee Sweet Land of Liberty,
Everyone’s free except me.
repeat chorus
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Listen to “I Hate My Government” at the Marques Bovre Music Hub.
© and ℗ 1994 Marques Bovre