He was a conservative?

By Christopher Alleva

The San Fransico Chronicle is reporting that SF school teachers are being urged to emulate Jimi Hendrix. James Taranto at the WSJ's best of the web reports that this is causing a minor stir on the web with some mocking the seemingly insane liberal sensibility of this nation's great city by bay.

Those fussing over Hendrix should know he was an avowed conservative. In arguably the most definitive biography of Hendrix, Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek recount the words of Hendrix as well other musicians on the scene in the late 60s that document conclusively his deeply held conservative beliefs.

Oddly enough, the authors suggest that his self induced psychosis on LSD didn't even cause him to give up his conservative principles. In a 1967 interview with a Dutch magazine, Hendrix defended America's involvement in Vietnam commenting that if America bugged out of Vietnam they (the Vietnamese) will be at the mercy of the communists (page 387).

With the hindsight of more than four decades of history, even failed presidential candidate John Kerry has yet to understand this. Hallucinating in July 2007 to secure defeat in Iraq, Kerry made the preposterous claim during a C-Span appearance that fears of a bloodbath after the US withdrawal from Vietnam never materialized. Even going so far as to attest that he met survivors of the "reeducation camps" who are thriving in modern Vietnam. As Charleston Daily Mail columnist Don Surber acerbicly noted,

"An award-winning investigation by the Orange County Register concludes that at least 165,000 people perished in the camps. And 2 million in Cambodia. You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in the Senate."

Setting the record straight, Jimi Hendrix was a principled conservative through and through. Using his tragic and untimely death to mock San Francisco is less than gracious. But I wonder, is the Superintendent aware of Hendrix's conservative views?