The phrase "love it or leave it," newly relevant in the cruel, toxic summer of 2019, has floated around American politics since at least as far back as World War II, but was widely popularized 49 years ago by a country song. MERLE HAGGARD's "THE FIGHTIN' SIDE OF ME," which rendered the sentiment as "if you don't love it, leave it," is a blistering, belligerent anti-anti-war song that topped the BILLBOARD country chart for three weeks and scraped the bottom of the pop chart, too, at a time when Vietnam War protests were at a fever pitch. The KENT STATE shootings would happen less than half a year later. Musically speaking, it's one of Haggard's early masterpieces, a tough, compact and catchy pearl of West Coast country songcraft. Lyrically, it's well-crafted, heartfelt, divisive and despicable, telling anti-war activists that the singer doesn't mind them "standing up for things that they believe in" but he does mind them living in the same country as him. I respect you; now leave. He calls them "squirrelly" and complains that they "preach about some other way of living," all of which sounds strangely familiar half a century later. "The Fightin' Side of Me" wasn't the single Haggard wanted to release in January 1970, though. Following up "OKIE FROM MUSKOGEE," the red-state anti-drug anthem that became his signature song—much to his chagrin—he wanted his next single to be "IRMA JACKSON," an interracial love song about a couple kept apart by the social mores of the same country that loved "Okie From Muskogee." He was itching to play against type. He cared about civil rights. But CAPITOL RECORDS said no. It wasn't on brand and, the label feared, it might be a few years ahead of his audience. So, forced to double down on an image he didn't want, Haggard ended up playing to the worst impulses of at least part of his audience while gifting the country with one of the ugliest sentiments of the times, a sentiment that has proved remarkably enduring. Love it or leave it indeed. Attach it to a good melody and great-sounding guitars and it can be strangely seductive. Haggard endured, too, but he changed with the years. He became an enthusiastic marijuana consumer and came to treat his anti-drug anthem, which remained a calling card, as a piece of satire. His audience generally went along with that. But he was an avid supporter of the military and his anti-peacenik anthem remained closer to his heart. He defended it to the end. I've listened to enough Haggard over the years to know the harshest judgments within that song don't represent the man he became. He was a better patriot than that, a proud citizen and chronicler of a complicated, ever-changing America. But the songwriter doesn't always get final say over what the song says. Once he lets it out into the world, it's the world's to decide, for better or worse... This is the most wonderful music nerd video I've seen in at least seven or 11 minutes: "Playing a 7/11 polyrhythm inside a 7-Eleven on July 11th at 7:11 for 7 minutes and 11 seconds"... This is a BLACK KEYS, um, masterclass... MAKING THE BAND, it's back... STUBHUB issues a half-million bucks worth of blackout refunds.