My son Julian has loved the melody of this song for a long time. He came home from school one day singing it endlessly.

He likes the fun of the tune.

He's never told me any incisive opinions about the lyrics, because they’re pretty obvious.

This is, after all, a planet where all things necessary for daily life either grow out of the ground or fall out of the sky. Nobody can debate that.

This planet, where everything is given to whoever needs it, is the conscious benevolence of some great force, speaking to us. Christians might say it is the very Word of God, physically incarnate. Ralph Waldo Emerson was thinking about this in 1836 when he wrote, "What is matter? Matter is a phenomenon, not a substance."

Again, Emerson: "Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other’s hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man."

It's up to you to believe you can intercede in this indiscriminate divine charity, take possession of nature's gifts, and create artificial scarcity for your own benefit.

Woodie Guthrie wrote "This Land Is Your Land" as an alternative to "God Bless America." I'll let you contemplate the differences and similarities.

Since he wrote this song, some have rejected it out of hand because it was written by a communist, while some consider it America's unofficial national anthem. Some love the more radical lyrics that aren’t considered part of the finished version of the song, and consider it a badge of their purity that they tirelessly make everybody aware of them. Views of it in our self-radicalized times are typically over the top.

Kids, regardless, love this song because it is a good song.

Nobody is more or less vindicated. This song is nobody's property. It was made for you and me.