When President Obama ran for reelection, his campaign speech was accompanied at nearly every stop by Bruce Springsteen’s song We Take Care of Our Own. It was an explicit endorsement of the values expressed in that song and in Springsteen’s lyrics more generally. Springsteen wrote We Take Care of Our Own and, indeed, the entire Wrecking Ball album in the context of the Great Recession, and the values contained therein are less American values than exhortatory values. They are what Springsteen thinks American values ought to be.
From Chicago to New Orleans
From the muscle to the bone
From the shotgun shack to the Superdome
There ain’t no help, the cavalry stayed home
There ain’t no one hearing the bugle blown’
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag’s flown
We take care of our ownWhere’re the eyes, the eyes with the will to see
Where’re the hearts that run over with mercy
Where’s the love that has not forsaken me
Where’s the work that’ll set my hands, my soul free
Where’s the spirit that’ll reign over me
Where’s the promise from sea to shining sea
Where’s the promise from sea to shining sea
Wherever this flag is flown
Wherever this flag is flown
Wherever this flag is flownWe take care of our own
Think about those aspirational lyrics in the context of Bowe Bergdahl. Whatever emotional traumas or addled reasoning led him to walk off his base in Afghanistan five years ago are not for us to judge when we’re thinking about securing his freedom. We could not forsake him; we had to set him free. We could not ignore the bugle call. The calvary could not stay home. Whatever his faults, we had to treat him with mercy. Wherever our flag is flown, we take care of our own.
In securing Bengdahl’s freedom, Obama was doing what he promised to do on the campaign trail. In securing Bengdahl’s freedom, he vindicated Springsteen’s trust in him.
define “our own” …
</GOP>
in this context, it means Americans. Americans should look after Americans whether they’re sheltered in the Superdome or living in a shotgun shack or they’re captives of the Taliban.
normal americans understand that. the GOP, however, unable to devise a successor to their dying southern strategy, is finding that they need to constantly redefine whom “our own” includes, which no longer means certain POWs.
I’m shocked and saddened that ABC’s poll shows that 51% of Americans think Bergdahl is a traitor. Only 39% think he is not, implying 10% aren’t sure.
Simple lack of empathy.
In his last years in ‘Nam, my brother-in-law carried a knife – to protect himself from his fellow soldiers. He told me he stabbed someone in Tan Son Nhut who was going through his pockets as he slept on the floor waiting for a flight.
The article you linked to depicts a total breakdown of military discipline, typical of a defeated army.
OK, we take care of our own. I am 100% in favor of that.
We should take care of our own. We should take care of our children.
We owe them.
What does this say about the current Democratic obsession with illegals? We need to have jobs for Americans, and TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN – your very own mantra. That is who we owe. Not illegals.
When you say this, you probably do not think it through. But that is the implication.
When we bring people here to pick our crops, those people become our own.
Those are guest workers. No one is picking crops in Chicago.
The undocumented make up an estimated 5.6% of the workforce in Illinois and 4.1% of the population, which is about the national percentage.
One area of bipartisan agreement, at least among think tanks, is that these folks are not costing Americans jobs.
I repeat, they are not picking crops in Chicago.
I suspect a lot are mowing lawns, trimming trees, laying down patios, et cetera. So many workers with no English at all. It boggles the mind that all of them are legal and what else would poor peasant farmers do in a strange land? They have spent their lives at home working with plants and stones.
we don’t have guest workers, it’s a legal category
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guest_worker_program
as far as undocumenteds working in the USA – you’d rather have our fruit and vegetables rot like they did the last two years?
Machinery. I used to be part of a team designing it at the late lamented International Harvester, a good UAW company with excellent pay and benefits.
Fuck that. We’ve spent so much of our history fighting over who “our own” is. Are black people our own? Native Americans? Time was, even European Catholics weren’t “our own” as far as the Know Nothings were concerned.
Besides, I live in California, where I grew up eating tacos and enchiladas in places with names like Los Angeles and San Bernardino. And where we have a shameful history of treating people from other races, other cultures, as subhuman parasites even as they do all the dirty work. Enough of that shit.
You folks are clearly ignorant of the working class and why they do not vote democratic any more.
We democrats are fond of saying that we help the working class. But we do not.
The skilled trades are simply innundated by illegals. Here is a short passage from an article about mexican workers on roofs:
What about the Katrina rehab?
Illegals have displaced millions of US construction, skilled trades, and blue collar workers. If you know any skilled trades workers, ask them if they like that competition for jobs. Remember, many of them are also gun nuts, so be sure they are friendly. They are NOT enthused about the competition.
If it was only crops, I’m for immigrant labor, but Americans will do those jobs. There are a LOT of other jobs that illegals displace Americans from.
What about our children who just graduated from college? The S744 was going to increase the H-1B visas from 65K to 190K (that is, removing 125K jobs from American workers and giving them to temporary visa holders). Obama’s little midnight escapade of giving 100,000 additional jobs to H-1b wives means 100,000 fewer jobs for American workers.
This little song about “we take care of our own” is a good one. We should take care of our own. We owe our own FIRST, and everyone else SECOND, way second.
And just to finish the Katrina comment: Many local BLACK and CAJUN construction firms could not get jobs. They went to firms who undercut them with illegal labor.
Finally, remember Bob Perry? The guy who used his housing profits to finance the “Swift Boat” approach to destroy Kerry? He got his money by replacing American workers on his houses in Texas with illegals.
Why is it that so many “progressives” are working so hard to help people like Bob Perry destroy the US labor market?
ok, that is true around here also – construction work
Les ouvriers n’ont pas de patrie.
Springsteen’s answer to your question is probably contained in another song on his “Wrecking Ball” album: “American Land”.
Here’s the last verse of the song:
“They died building the railroads, they worked to bones and skin;
They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind;
They died to get here a hundred years ago, they’re still dying now;
Their hands that built the country we’re always trying to keep out.”
I am 62, and I don’t think anything else in my lifetime has DISGUSTED me as much as the current BULLSHIT going on regarding Bo’s release. Until these Unpatriotic BIGOTS learn to LOVE my Country more than they HATE MY President, the America I have lived my whole life in is Doomed.
America ALWAYS tries to bring home it’s soldiers. Today, some sick “Americans” forget this part of our history that separates America from many of our enemies, and to which these “AMERICANS” now say only POWs they approve of should be returned.
These complainers aren’t Americans:
They are HATERS who represent the WORSE of what America is supposed to stand for” ONE country, under God”, whoever the president is!
Unfortunately for Repubs, life doesn’t imitate (Springsteen’s art).
And I suggest you correct a small typo: “cavalry”, not calvary….sorta different.
Heartbreaking how Bergdahl, his family and his town are being treated. Read about how his father grew his beard to give the look of an elder to convey his humanity and worthiness of respect (my terms) to his son’s captors, how the town was preparing the welcome home then blindsided by media vendetta against Obama via Bergdahl. heartbreaking and sickening