Guthrie's first public recording of the song, released in 1951, dropped these verses. The sarcastic hook of "God blessed America for me" was changed to "This land was made for you and me." But the Smithsonian CD includes a rendition with Guthrie singing the lines attacking "private property," and the liner notes say "the 'Private Property' verse became a part of (Woody's son) Arlo Guthrie's and Pete Seeger's renditions of the song."
Guthrie wrote columns for Peoples Daily World, a Communist Party newspaper, but was never a member of the Communist Party. "Guthrie instead served as what the party called a 'fellow traveler,' a nonmember who generally agreed with the Communist Party platform but was not subject to party discipline," writes Ed Cray in his 2004 biography "Ramblin' Man -- The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie."
In 1945, Guthrie scribbled on the flyleaf of Karl Marx's "Das Kapital": "The man that writes our best ballad will read this book from cover to cover . . . I'd like to try and write all of these things down in short words."
"While he was less disciplined than members of the party," writes Cray, "he nonetheless followed the party line, even to the extent of endorsing Communist North Korea's invasion of autocratic South Korea."
My father did not back the Communists in Korea. He fought them as a battalion aide surgeon in the 7th Infantry Division.
But my father's roots roughly resemble Guthrie's. Both came of age in the Midwest dust bowl, in the Great Depression, in families that knew real want. Both went West. Both pursued their dreams to professional success -- Guthrie as a folksinger, my father as a doctor.
My father, however, always attributed his success to American freedom, to the system of private enterprise and private property that Guthrie scorned in songs that futilely preached class war to the Greatest Generation.
If John Kerry, a son of privilege, poses as a tax-the-rich populist next week, then starts singing "This Land is Your Land," I suspect my father will be smiling down on him and thinking: He couldn't have picked a more fitting song.