The Dixie Chicks, suddenly, aren’t the only country musicians whose politics are known to be somewhere to the left of the Republican base. “It’s telling when country luminary Merle Haggard has an entry on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of top protest songs. Country musicians and their fans tend to hail from conservative states with high enlistment rates. Then again, the toll of the war on the sons and daughters of these states has been acute.”