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Robin's going to REALLY date herself here:
"When I was a young teen--very young, practically just out of kindergarten--The 5th Dimension was my favorite group in the whole world. I owned most of their albums.
"Recently, I purchased their Definitive Hits collection, and was pleased to find that they are just as great as I remembered. One of my absolute favorite songs (originally from their Portrait album) is the medley 'The Declaration/A Change Is Gonna Come/People Got to be Free.' 'The Declaration' is actually part of The Declaration of Independence set to music, and it is soul-stirring. (The superb musical arrangement is by J. Johnsen and R. DeKnight.) I can still sing the whole thing from memory, very badly off-key.
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"Also interesting, thirty years later, are the words to 'People Gotta Be Free' (by E. Brigati). They go, in part:
All the world over so easy to see
People everywhere just want to be free
Listen please listen that's the way it should be--
Deep in the valley people got to be free.
"This was bold, cutting-edge stuff in the early 70's--the chant of liberals. But who's singing these lyrics now? Who has put muscle behind these cutesy words to make them a reality beyond our own borders?
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"Times change. Political agendas change. But timeless ideals like life, liberty and great music just don't go away."
Addendum: Since we've been getting so many search-engine hits from people looking for the lyrics to the 5th Dimension's "Declaration," here they are:
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government; laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes, and accordingly, all experience has shown:
That mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing, invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism;
It is their right; it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
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