Lyric discussion by tinabeana 

I'm think of this song as somewhat sarcastic, but I could be wrong. As an active volunteer and someone who takes action often, I interpreted a lot of these lyrics differently.

"We shall not be moved Except By a child with no socks and shoes We shall not be moved Except by a woman dying from a loss of food"

To me, the chorus is saying that people are not moved unless it is something terrible and drastic, such as a child in a third world country without any shoes (think about the new TOMS shoes trend) or a humans starving (again, in other countries) because they don't have enough to eat. "Put your hands up and I'll copy you" is saying something about the "do-good" trends and the tendency to want to "save" other countires without realizing the problems and poverty we have in our own country.

"If you've got more to give then you've got to prove" (If you have the money to give then you better donate donate donate, and it better be to a well-known cause in a third world country)

"We still don't understand thunder and lightning Flash back to when we didn't fund the dam Didn't fund the dam levee? No wonder man Now our whole damn city's torn us under man Under water but we still don't understand We see hurricane spills overrun the land Through gaps you couldn't fill with a 100 tons of sand" (Obviously a reference to the hurricane disasters and how little our government did to not only prevent it but also to help the citizens. I think this is also to make us think about the poverty in AMERICA. Did you know most of these families are still homeless? Their houses still in shambles, but they are still living in them because they have no where else to go? They are living without roofs and walls and living in toxic mold and muck.

"We sit back and wait for the government team Criticize they but who the fuck are we" (Again, talking about how little action we as citizens actually take but how much TALKING, COMPLAINING, and CRITICIZING we do)

So that is my two cents :) Could be wrong, but lyrics are open to interpretation, right?

I never really thought of it that way tibeana. I see it as that we won't be moved by little shit like big spending governments, stuff like that. But we're gonna do something about stuff that really matters.

I think you are 100% right. This song is about a citizens inaction.

First off: this whole argument about the war in iraq is, for lack of a better word, retarded. Some feel that the war was necessary, and that we had to prove to the rest of the world that the US is a great and powerful nation. Violence answered with violence does absolutely nothing except make us look weak, and drop us down to the same level as the Al Queda. Iraq, as a country, was not involved with the 9/11 attacks. Al Queda was responsible for that, and they were only hiding out in a mountain cave in iraq simply...

An error occured.