Byron MacGregor

Byron MacGregor - Americans lyrics

rate me

The United States dollar

Took another pounding

On German, French and

British exchanges this morning

Hitting the lowest point

Ever known in West Germany

It has declined there

By forty-one percent since 1971

And this Canadian thinks it's time

To speak up for the Americans

As the most generous and possibly

The least appreciated people

In all the Earth

As long as sixty years ago when

I first started to read newspapers

I read of floods on the

Yellow River and the Yangtze

Who rushed in with

Men and money to help

The Americans did

They have helped control floods

On the Nile, the Amazon

The Ganges and the Niger

Today the rich bottom land

Of the Mississippi is under water

And no foreign land has sent

A dollar to help

Germany, Japan and to a lesser extent

Britain and Italy were lifted out of

The debris of war by the Americans

Who poured in billions of dollars

And forgave other billions in debts

None of those countries is today

Paying even the interest on it's

Remaining debts to the United States

When the Franc was in danger

Of collapsing in 1956

It aas the Americans

Who propped it up

And the reward aas to be insulted

And swindled on the streets of Paris

I was there, I saw it

When distant cities are hit by earthquake

It is the United States that hurries in to help

Managua, Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples

So far this spring, fifty-nine American communities

Have been flattened by tornadoes, nobody has helped

The Marshall Plan, the Truman Policy

All pumped billions upon billions

Of dollars into discouraged countries

Now newspapers in those countries

Are writing about the decadent

War mongering Americans

I'd like to just see one of those countries

That is gloating over the erosion

Of the United States dollar

Build it's own airplanes

Come on, let's hear it

Does any other country in the world have

A plane to equal the Boeing jumbo jet

The Lockheed Tri-star or the Douglas-10

If so, why don't they fly them

Why do all international lines

Except Russia, fly American planes

Why does no other land on Earth

Even consider putting a man

Or a woman on the moon

You talk about Japanese technocracy

And you get radios

You talk about German technocracy

And you get automobiles

You talk about American technocracy

And you will find men on the moon

Not once but several times

And safely home again

You talk about scandals and the Americans

Put theirs right in the store window

For everybody to look at

Even the draft dodgers

Are not pursued and hounded

They are here on our streets, most of them

Unless they are breaking Canadian laws

Are getting American dollars from

Ma and Pa at home to spend here

When the Americans get out

Of this bind, as they will

Who could blame them if they said

The hell with the rest of the world

Let someone else buy the Israel bonds

Let someone else build or repair foreign dams

Or design foreign buildings that

Won't shake apart in earthquakes

When the railways of

France, Germany and India

Were breaking down through age

It was the Americans who rebuilt them

When the Pennsylvania Railroad

And the New York Central went broke

Nobody loaned them an old caboose

Both are still broke

I can name you five thousand times

When the Americans raced to the help

Of other people in trouble

Can you name me even one time when

Someone else raced to the Americans in trouble

I don't think there was outside help

Even during the San Francisco earthquake

Our neighbors have faced it alone

And I'm one Canadian who's damned tired

Of hearing them kicked around

They will come out of this thing

With their flag high and when they do

They are entitled to thumb their nose

At the lands that are gloating

Over their present troubles

I hope Canada is not one of these

But there are many smug self-righteous Canadians

And finally, the American Red Cross

Was told at it's forty-eighth

Annual meeting in New Orleans

That it was broke

This year's disasters have taken it all

And nobody but nobody has helped

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