The Song of Avarice

This one was written two Fridays ago, on a slow market day. I thought I might find the time to compose a Topical Song to a Familiar Tune, a genre that borders on parody. So which popular tune would I desecrate? An old man was wearing a hat advertising "Country Gentlemen: Fox on the Run," a 1970s Nashville song with a tune that continues to appeal to male harmony groups. The original words were about a woman who "took all the love that a poor boy could give her, and left him to die like a fox on the run." Hmm. Sounds like something the Evil Spirit of Avarice--greed--is always trying to do in one way or another.

Fwiw, I believe that where there are humans, there will always be Avarice. A totalitarian socialist state doesn't wither away and expose a communitarian paradise; it breeds more aggressively vicious greedheads and more timorous victims. As C.S. Lewis observed, people who were cheaters and bullies under one system will soon find ways to be those things under a different system. Nevertheless, the more individual liberty people have, the less vulnerable they are to other people's Avarice.

At this point in time, I see Avarice actively working to destroy small towns, to herd people away from the land, pack them into slums to die. I see this having been set up for years with estate taxes, land use regulations, tax benefits for "depreciation," efforts to prevent people from working from home, campaigns to replace even private houses with tax-funded "housing" boondoggles that rapidly become slums. I think both rural and urban Americans need to recognize that this "trend" was better described as a deadly War on Rural America. Human beings need uncrowded, Green places to live in just as every other creature does. Let the huge agro-corporations raise their hydroponic and bioengineered products in airtight "high-rise" buildings...and raise money, if we throw money at "the housing problem" at all, to make sure every child in America has a pet and a garden of its own.

So here's the song. "She" refers to Avarice...in modern cartoons Avarice is usually drawn as a fat old man, but in Latin Avaritia is a feminine noun.

She looked on the bottom-land down by the river;

She envied the soil and she envied the sun.

She took everything that that small town could give her

And left it to die like a fox on the run.

Some want to build a nation; she'd rather watch one fall.

She has a nose for money, and she wants to get it all.

So she'll corrupt our government with the promise of control,

Corrode it from within like a weevil in a boll.

She looked on the bald patches high on the mountain;

She envied the clouds and she envied the coal.

She stripped off the resources, too fast to count them,

And left people there like a fox in a hole.

She tells the people everything should start out big and then grow.

She overlooks the question--where does a cancer go?

She tells poor fools, "Invest it all," and waits to see them fail,

While writing rules so tangled they'll send any one to jail.

She looked on the shining sands out by the ocean,

She envied the minerals, she envied the water.

She grabbed for the rights to all that struck her notion,

And left people like a fox driven to slaughter.

To her the honest worker is the same as the common bum;

If you don't have a fortune, then you don't have a crumb.

She hates to see a little business that can make ends meet.

She'd give the multinationals monopoly complete.

She looked on the green grass that covered the prairie,

She envied the oil and she envied the plains.

She grabbed everything where the owners weren't wary

And left them to die like a fox caught in chains.

She's trying to disguise herself as a Girl Scout dressed in green.

Just cut off all her money, and you'll soon see what I mean:

She never was a woman; she's a limbless parasite.

She'll soon dry out and wither up once she is brought to light.

She looked on the delta land down by the river,

She envied the rich black earth, she envied the heat.

But the people woke up and said no more they'd give her,

Like a fox that's learned something, back up on its feet,

Like a fox, like a fox, like a fox, like a fox on its feet!