Worst. List. EVER. (A New Champion?)

Conservatives are notorious for being total and absolute morons when it comes to music, from Reagan mis-using Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." to David Brooks bitching about indie music. However, it appears that a few years back John Miller took the conservative ability to completely twist and pervert music to serve his own needs to amazing and unprecedented heights on his list of "The 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs." I thought music lists couldn't get any worse than this one, but Miller finds a way by injecting the basest political views and completely perverting entire songs by grabbing on to one or two lines and completely twisting them out of their context.

Just to offer a brief response to only a handful of his horribly misunderstood selections:

-Pete Townsend wasn't railing against naive idealism; he was railing against a lack of any major difference between any political leaders, left or right. He most certainly was not supporting any conservative ideals.

-Chrissie Hynde was railing against the capitalist values and deregulation that led to the destruction of forests and fields for malls, as well as the gentrification and unregulated development that was changing Akron's downtown (I should know - I lived there long enough to see some of those changes myself). She most certainly was not displaying "a conservative's dissatisfaction with change," given that her dissatisfaction was directed at the rich tearing apart her city just to get richer.

-Like Pete Townsend before them, Living Colour was railing against establishment politicians of any color; they most certainly were not taking down "liberals" and "communists" for the sake of any conservative ideology.

-" 'Heroes' "(it's in quotations, John; that should tell you something about its sarcastic tone) is about a brutal relationship finally falling totally apart; it is not about the possibility of the fall of communism.

-Saying that "Rock the Casbah" was not played on some radio stations after 9/11 and that it's a big hit in England does nothing to establish how it embodies conservative values. Has Miller ever even heard the Clash? Has he listened to even two words beyond "Rock the Casbah"?

-Miller Clearly never learned a single thing about John Lennon (and let me be clear, I'm not a Lennon idolator). Lennon's message was peace and love, not left-wing or right-wing. If he were anything ideologically, I think it's safe to say he pretty much fell closer to the left than the right, given his stance against Vietnam, his promotion of drug use, his practicality on religion, etc. John Lennon's campaign for peace and love, as well as his explicit drug use in the late-1960s and 1970s, stood about as far from conservative politics then as they do now.

It's really amazing Miller didn't mis-represent, misinterpret, or straight-up not listen to more songs. I'm surprised not to see Funkadelic's "Foot Soldiers" as a pro-war statement. Or the Stranglers' "(Just Get A) Grip (On Yourself)" as a symbol of level-headed, rational conservative expectations. Or the Dead Kennedys' "Holiday in Cambodia" as an anti-Communist song.

Certainly, some choices make sense (Stand By Your Man, or Sweet Home Alabama [and I'm waiting for your defense of Sweet Home Alabama as a song critical of the South, Erik]), and some are so WTF as to not even merit attention (the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't Be Nice" as a symbol of conservative pro-abstinence, pro-marriage views???).

Still, this is quite possibly the stupidest of the stupid lists I've ever seen in my entire life.