Steve Earle – “I have an agenda, and I am unapologetic about that agenda”

NO DEPRESSION: The government took two lessons from Vietnam. One is the Powell Doctrine — use massive force. The second is, control media access.

SE: Right. There hasn’t been a declared war that the United States has been involved in since World War II. Most people don’t even know what the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is all about. It wasn’t until 1963 that the President had the power to wage war without the permission of the Congress, which is ostensibly the permission of the people.

And it’s always important to remember that we were born of a revolution, but it was not a revolution of the people, it was a revolution of rich landowners that didn’t want to pay their fucking taxes. But we did, inadvertently, create this thing that’s bigger than we are, and it’s the Constitution.

No matter how conservative or how liberal they are, the vast majority of [Supreme Court Justices] end up a slave to that document. They go back to it and they read what it says, and they interpret it. For the most part, that part of the process really, really works. And it’s a problem for conservatives. It’s a problem for liberals, but it is what glues us all together.

The one part that saves us, that keeps our democracy from being completely and totally a sham, is the part of it that’s about freedom of speech and freedom of the press. We do have the freedom to print or broadcast anything we want. The reason we don’t is commerce.

II. THE BOTTOM LINE IS, I CAN WRITE A SONG FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ANYONE

ND: I would not have thought that “John Walker’s Blues” was the political song on Jerusalem.

SE: It’s not. “John Walker’s Blues” doesn’t have a political agenda. It’s acquired a political agenda — freedom of speech — after the fact. It was born of my own ignorance of Islam. Every revelation of mine in six months of reading about Islam is in that song. I am putting words into John Walker’s mouth; some of the things that my John Walker says came right out of John Walker Lindh’s mouth, straight off of CNN.

“Allah had some other plans.” I paraphrased it. “I think every person out here was prepared to martyr themselves, but Allah had some other plan,” I think is exactly what he said. So that’s half that verse. One of the lines that’s been harped on, “If I should die, rise up to the sky, just like Jesus, peace be upon him”…I did not know before that every time a Moslem says “Isau,” which is Jesus, he says “peace be upon him,” just like he when he says “Mohammed.” Every single time.

Islam is basically the belief that everyone else who had worshiped the god of Abraham before, in spite of what the religion taught, had become idolaters. I think you’d be hard-put to find one in 10,000 Americans that know that the God that’s worshiped in Islam is the same God that’s worshiped in Christianity.

They also have a real problem with the idea that God created man in his own image. In Islam one of the fundamentals is, God is not man. God doesn’t look a fucking thing like man. God’s God and man’s man. Period. There’s one God, and he’s God. And he’s big, and he’s all-encompassing, and he does not have hands and feet, and doesn’t look like a man. They see trying to shove God into that mold as vanity, and less than spiritual.

ND: Did you have any idea that the symbolism you were using in that song was as loaded as seems to have proven to be?

SE: It’s kind of intentionally loaded. Yeah, I knew. I knew as soon as it came out of my mouth, “Just like Jesus, peace be upon him” was going to create exactly the reaction that it did with some people.

ND: Let me run through the arguments that the Wall Street Journal and others have made. “It is disloyal to write from the perspective of a traitor.”

SE: If John Walker was a traitor, that means he’d be charged with treason. They couldn’t make a treason case, or believe me they’d be trying one. I don’t think that John Walker’s a traitor, in the sense that…I don’t recognize a state of war, number one.

But, the bottom line is, I can write a song from the perspective of anyone. Absolutely. I’ve written from the standpoint of a lot more despicable people than John Walker. Billy Austin, who I made up, is really based on Gary Gilmore more than anybody else. I went out of my way to make Billy Austin as despicable as possible. And the reason for that is, I oppose the death penalty. Not the death penalty for people who are innocent. I oppose it for O.J. Simpson, I oppose it for Ted Bundy. My opposition to the death penalty is absolute.

ND: “It’s too soon after 9-11 for this song.”

SE: Well, I don’t think I got it out fast enough, because before I could get it out, John Walker pled guilty. He’s going to do 20 years. That’s a long fucking time for a 20-year-old to be locked up, so I was about a month too late.