U.S. President Donald Trump addresses a House Republican retreat at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Jan. 6.Alex Wong/Getty Images

As a child of the sixties and seventies, I grew up on some of the greatest music ever made. And many of the most iconic recordings of that period were inspired by protest, motivated by the rage boiling up in young people over the actions of the U.S. government.

It’s said that Neil Young wrote his searing diatribe Ohio in less than an hour after seeing photos in Life magazine of the anti-war demonstration at Kent State University that resulted in the shooting deaths, by Ohio National Guard members, of four student protesters.

“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming / We’re finally on our own / This summer I hear the drumming / Four dead in Ohio.”

There were other songs that chronicled the mood of the time: War by Edwin Starr, What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye, and perhaps my favourite, Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival. It, too, was the product of growing frustration inside America’s counterculture movement over the actions of a federal government many saw as acting with impunity.

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Fortunate Son took aim at the unfairness of the mandatory military........

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