Fortunate Son

Creedence Clearwater Revival's 1969 Classic is Not a Celebration of Antiwar Protestors

Photo by Karl Wiggers on Unsplash

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Creedence Clearwater Revivals’ classic hit, “Fortunate Son,” finds its way into patriotic celebrations around this time of year, despite not exactly being a celebratory, pro-America song. I like CCR, and although “Fortunate Son” isn’t my favorite song of theirs (”Cotton Fields” and their versions of “Heard It Through The Grapevine” and “Suzie Q” are among my favorites),¹ I like the song. In a way, I do think it’s an appropriate song for this time of year, because while it isn’t celebrating America, it is celebrating the ordinary, working-class American. From the earliest decades of the republic, American culture has had a democratic spirit which celebrated the workingman, and the song is quite fitting in that tradition.

Many educated Baby Boomers who have fond memories of protesting Vietnam imagine that “Fortunate Son” is their song. It’s an antiwar song, after all, or at least not a pro-war song. The protagonist sings that he isn’t one of those “folks... made to wave the flag,” who “inherit star-spangled eyes,” who “point the cannon at you,” and answer “more, more, more” when asked “how much should we give?” The protagonist contrasts himself with patriotic folks who demand sacrifice by someone else. And Vietnam protestors may have patted themselves on the back, because they certainly were neither patriotic, nor demanding of any sacrifices.

But the protestors were, by and large, college students. Students who often received draft deferments due to being in school. Some of them would eventually have to go. But, by and large, the men who were drafted to go and fight in Vietnam were the ones who didn’t go to college (a majority of young American men in the 1960s and ‘70s didn’t go to college, and wouldn’t have been eligible for college deferments).

When the protagonist sings that he wasn’t “born silver spoon in hand,” and that he wasn’t a “millionaire’s son,” the meaning is clear: he was one of the young men who didn’t have any privileges. He had to go. He may not have liked the war any more than the college students. But he didn’t have any college deferment option. He just had to go and fight.

While not all Vietnam protestors looked down on soldiers, many did. They spit on returning soldiers - working-class men who went away to war against their will - and called them “babykillers.” Returning soldiers, young men without any advantages in life, often had a hard time adjusting to civilian life. It didn’t help that many protestors turned their anger at the government towards the young men who had no choice in going to fight the government’s wars.

I actually think there is a case to be made that Vietnam was a noble war. For almost fifteen years, we defended a people who were not our own against godless, communist terrorists who wanted to set up a dictatorship. When we pulled out of Saigon, a lot of our allies were killed or tortured.

But even if the war was unjust, that’s no reason to discriminate against young men who were forced to go against their will, especially when the class divide meant that the people who got to stay home already had more advantages in life.

John Fogerty has said in recent years that the song is about the working-class guy who had to go and fight. It’s not a pro-war song, but it is a pro-soldier song. It’s a song about the ordinary man, who didn’t want to go but went anyway. The heroes of the song aren’t the ones who stayed home and protested.

Fogerty said in an interview that the “fortunate son” in the song, the “millionaire’s son” who didn’t have to go and fight, is a man like Donald Trump. Trump was born with a silver spoon in hand. And he lied about bone spurs so that he didn’t have to go and fight. A lot of working-class kids would’ve liked to have that option.

It is worth noting that anti-Vietnam sentiment broke down along age and class. Antiwar sentiment was actually higher in older demographics. While college-educated young Americans were fiercely antiwar, the most pro-war demographic in America were working-class young people. You know, the ones doing most of the fighting and dying.

I suspect that this partly had to do with the way returning soldiers were treated. Support for the war was a proxy for solidarity with the ones fighting it. During the war, the class divide between working-class and college-educated became sharper. A lot of young working-class men didn’t like the antiwar protestors, perhaps because of the way their friends were treated when they returned home.

With the pain of Vietnam in the past and the tensions cooled down, I think we can assess the song in a calmer light. Today, there is much greater support for the average American military servicemember. There is a widespread cultural understanding that those guys don’t make the decisions. They just sign up to go and do the work, make the sacrifices, fight and die. It’s still true that many of those who go into the military don’t go to college, and often don’t have many good options in life. These are the young men “Fortunate Son” celebrates. And that’s why I think it’s still a good anthem today, even if it isn’t quite the rousing patriotic anthem some would have it.

1. Which is why the cover photo for this post is a cotton field