Politics & Power Quote by Iris DeMent

Patriotism usually comes packaged as obedience, especially when the subject is war. Iris DeMent flips that script with a plainspoken jab: we brand refusal as “sin” not because it’s immoral, but because it’s inconvenient. The opening move, “Some guy,” is doing quiet work. It’s deliberately ordinary, shrinking the distance between grand national myths and the actual human body expected to carry them. No heroics, no anthem swell - just a person who won’t comply.

The line’s bite comes from its moral inversion. “We call that the sin” exposes how communities outsource ethical judgment to social pressure, treating dissent as a stain on the collective story. DeMent isn’t romanticizing cowardice; she’s interrogating why “fight” gets default moral credit while conviction gets punished when it costs the group something. The sentence pivots on “but,” and the phrase “standing up” is a neat rhetorical switch: the objector isn’t lying down, he’s upright. Refusal becomes an act, not an absence.

Then she claims the flag back. “Pretty damned American” is both affectionate and accusatory: a reminder that the national brand is supposed to include conscience, not just compliance. Coming from a musician, the diction matters - conversational, a little profane, emotionally legible. It sounds like someone talking after the show, not delivering a lecture, which is precisely why it lands. The subtext is a cultural argument: if America loves freedom, it has to tolerate the kind that makes people angry.