Saturday Music Hall: Bring 'Em Home

Just in time for the tragic and misbegotten escalations of violence in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and Gaza, Bruce Springstein performs a somber version of the historic protest song "Bring 'Em Home," with his Seeger Sessions band. Springsteen's latest album, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," is comprised of a number of songs written or made popular by folk singing legend, first amendment rights champion and anti-war, pro-labor, pro-environment activist Pete Seeger.

Below, Pete Seeger does his original version of the song, which he wrote during the Viet Nam war. He's still singing a version of this song today, at 87 years of age. In 2003 he re-recorded it with Ana DiFranco, Steve Earle and Billy Bragg. You can listen to that version here. And NPR has an interview and other broadcasts with or about Pete.

It never ends, does it? This myth that military aggression can solve every problem? Instead of fighting other humans with high-tech weaponry, we need to fight our real enemies -- poverty, sickness, ignorance, hunger, greed, selfishness, exploitation, intolerance, violence, dishonesty, hypocrisy. As Seeger sings, we're not using the right weaponry for these battles. They can't be beaten with bombs and guns.

As Gandhi once said, "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." Many long years after Viet Nam, the battle for sanity, common sense, compassion and reason continues.

Seeger in 1944 singing at the labor canteen in D.C.

Another timely message from another of Seeger's antiwar songs, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy:

But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man'll be over his head, we're
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!