We Are the New Counterculture

Now just let us GO. ("For What It's Worth" on #FreedomMusicFriday)

The 1966 classic “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield has been running through my head for weeks. I am not sure why.

If you don’t recognize the name, that’s just because it’s a terrible name for a great song. It should have been called “There's something happening here” or “Stop, Children.” See, now you know the song I mean. (Apparently, songwriter Stephen Stills said to the record label exec, “I have this song here, for what it's worth, if you want it.”)

There is a persistent impression, largely driven by its use in movies, that the song is about the Vietnam War. It isn’t. It was inspired by the Sunset Strip curfew riots.¹ Then, as protests (and violent responses by police) became more common, the song took on the character of a general countercultural anthem.

It has persisted, and become culturally iconic, because of its meaning and because it’s just good music. Gen Alpha (and Zoomers with culturally illiterate parents) may not recognize it…but what do they know, anyway?

So here we are in 2025. The people who were protesting against the man are now shilling for the man. Neil Young is a vax Nazi. Rage Against the Machine has become Rage FOR the Machine. Radicals who were once so anti-authority are now statists who love authority…especially when their “team” is in power.

Here, 60 years later, WE are the new counterculture. We see the state for what it is. We see the man for who he is.

In the 60s, many hippies had no interest in politics. They just wanted to live their lives. Many were even initially skeptical of and hostile to the Yippies and the New Left. The marriage of hippies and leftism happened later.

And here we are—now, we just want to live our lives. Like the music-goers on the Sunset Strip, we just want to do our own thing…but the man keeps hassling us.

So do we adopt and adapt “For What It’s Worth” for ourselves?

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear

Imposing their will by force is what they do. Resist them and you will see the gun.

There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

But here’s where we part ways…

There's battle lines being drawn

We don’t want battle-lines. We aren’t trying to force anyone else to live a certain way. We recognize that because democracy is the act of one group imposing its will upon another by force, democracy is NOT GOOD. (And yes, that includes constitutional republics). We don’t want to force anyone to do anything. We just want to go.

And we want out of the blue vs. red reindeer games…

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong

Once upon a time, they got it…

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
MOSTLY SAY, HOORAY FOR OUR SIDE

But now they’ve lost the plot. They’ve picked sides in a morally impermissible game. We just want to play a new game—one that doesn’t involve violation of the most fundamental principles of the universe.

What's that sound? It’s us, moving on.

It won’t be easy. It won’t be quick. And yeah, the man isn’t just going to let us go. At least not yet.

Down the road, if we do this right…the man won’t have a choice.

1. Thirty years later, (the woman who would one day become) my wife was a lead guitarist in bands playing on the Sunset Strip, and she says that local residents were still complaining about the noise and the traffic, just as they did decades earlier. Plus ça change…