Rights and Entitlements.
Excuse me if I trouble you
With my opinions and world views
It’s hard to contain, with all this news
Of warring Christians, Muslims, Jews.
We humans kill each other for,
Stupid reasons, because you’re poor,
You’re not as good as me, I’m more
With my four-wheeled petrol whore.
Here in the US, we take for granted
How hard our founders worked to get planted
The seeds of equality, as we chanted;
“Freedom!”, but now we’re disenchanted.
Over in Tibet, you’ll get beat
For raising your voice in the street.
But they will not admit defeat,
Cos when you’re home, you can’t retreat.
I hear it on the News at Five,
The body count of those alive
But dying slowly on the inside
From a word that's spelled like ‘hive’.
All these nostrum media cures
That tell us all to feel secure
But me myself, I’m not so sure
To me it feels like a barbed lure.
So they lull us into feeling safe
So that the government can save face
But those old men in those black suits
Should get out on the field and shoot
To see the faces their armies kill
Instead of just the wartime bill.
You know, the one with thirteen zeros
Behind six numbers. You feel like a hero?
How can you be so content
When AIDS is wiping out a continent?
So detached from life as WE live it
You could wage a war for oil and forgive it.
For all that killing, what have we learned?
For our children, what have we earned?
The right to speak, but tell no lie,
Right to live, right to die.
Right to my daddy's SUV,
To luxury, to life, to liberty.
I myself am not entitled to freedom.
That's a fight I didn't start, and haven't won.