Did Rock And Roll Save America From Communism?

I bet you thought rock and rollers in the '60s were all left-wing radicals advocating the violent takeover of America in order to replace our style of government with communism.

According to Ralph Benko, a conservative human rights advocate, you couldn't be more wrong:

[T]he evidence is that the greatest musicians of the golden age of Rock (to whose work we’re all still listening since nothing better has come along) are, where it counts the most, deeply conservative.

Taking this further, Benko believes the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who may have stopped America from installing a Marxist dictatorship (h/t Paul Chesser):

With the Cultural Revolution in full cry in China, and French students throwing Molotov cocktails in Paris (as in the image above, which, full disclosure, is of anarchist rioting after the Sarkozy election, not from the 60s), there was a great deal of agitation among students in the US in opposition to the Vietnam war, the draft, and in favor of civil rights and the sexual revolution.  There was also a lot of passion for Marxist thought.

We’ll never know exactly how close America came to installing a Marxist dictatorship.  But the failure to do so certainly wasn’t from any lack of effort by the self-avowed Marxist/Leninist student leaders.

Who stopped them?

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and The Who.  That’s who.

Some examples?

The most explicit pull on the “emergency chord” was The Beatles “Revolution,” from The White Album (1968) and the flip side to their mega-classic “Hey Jude” which guaranteed lots of airplay. Some lines:

<snip>

You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out

<snip>

You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We’re doing what we can
But when you want money
for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait

<snip>

You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You better free you mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow

Nobody was hipper than John Lennon.  If Lennon ruled out Lenin … revolution was officially un-hip.

Read on for more.