The Ernest Tubb and Stonewall Jackson tracks are both outstanding songs, whatever you may think of the specific political content. "It's America (Love It or Leave It)" sounds fairly offensive on the basis of the title, even to me, but try it out. Ernest Tubb was absolutely not a belligerant or bellicose guy, and the tone of the song is more thoughtful and carefully considered than you might guess. "If things don't go their way, they can always move away. That's what democracy means anyway." Hmm. That's certainly what the liberals would be saying if Gore had won the election.

The least musically interesting track still has a pretty interesting ring today. "Americans (A Canadian's Opinion)" involves Tex Ritter reading a letter to the editor from some Canadian speaking up in praise of America. It's nothing to do with the war, but basically excoriates the entire rest of the world for being ingrates, with nice details. Again, it's not really a song, but I am really, really appreciating the sentiment about now.

Oddly, the most recent and directly relevant song here seems the most distant and out of place. Hank Jr had a decent sized hit during the first Gulf War with "Don't Give Us a Reason." It's even a pretty good outlaw rock song with good hooks, actually one of his best musical constructs.

The tone of this thing absolutely would not fly today, however, and makes a real clear display of differences between then and now. The whole glib tone of this, the truly jingoistic and arrogant belligerence would be totally unacceptable. "You can take that poison gas, and stick it in your sassafrass." I seem to remember a lot of guys with cheap macho posturing about killing them all and letting God sort them out, and so forth. It's a much more serious world now, and I'm not hearing ANY of that, not even out here in rural crackerland. "I'd like to find out just for fun just how fast those camels can run." Yup, that was a different era.

You need to hear this. If you can't get it at Amazon, try hunting the songs down via Kazaa.