There Are Children in the Morning

 

There seems to be a common belief out there that Leonard Cohen is politically on the left. After all, he’s an artist, isn’t he? All artists are on the left. As Andy Warhol once put it, perhaps plaintively, “artists just can’t be Republican, can they?”

There is immense pressure on artists to support the left. There has been since the 1950s, probably as a reaction to the McCarthy witch hunts, and it has only grown since. Today, anyone who admits a stray right-wing thought risks their livelihood. It is rarely worth it for an artist; their commitment is to their art, and politics is a minor concern for most by comparison.

We need an artists’ liberation movement. But the current cancel culture and blacklisting is probably soon going to swing everything around, because it is just like McCarthyism, yet worse.

As a result of this pressure, we can assume anyone not openly left-wing is secretly right-wing. Along with some who are openly left-wing.

And Cohen has always played his politics close to the vest.

It is clear, nevertheless, that he opposes abortion, and has always opposed abortion.

“Teachers,” from his first album:

“Some girls wander by mistake
Into the mess that scalpels make.”

“Story of Isaac,” from his second album:

“You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,
You must not do it anymore.”

“Diamonds in the Mine,” from “Songs of Love and Hate”:

“And the only man of energy, the revolution’s pride
He trained a hundred women just to kill an unborn child.”

“Dance Me to the End of Love,” from “Various Positions”:

“Dance me to the children who are asking to be born.”

And finally, “Thanks for the Dance,” the title track of his last, posthumous album:

“Thanks for the dance
I hear that we're married
One, two, three, one, two, three, one
Thanks for the dance
And the baby you carried
It was almost a daughter or a son.”

It has in fact been an abiding concern. I suspect it was, for Cohen, a core concern.