“Cops of the World”: Phil Ochs, the American Empire and American Soil

The great singer-songwriter Phil Ochs was a powerful critic of the American empire in the 1960s. He saw imperialism as corrupting the very ideals and soul of America. Thus “Cops of the World”, from the album Phil Ochs in Concert released in 1966, was a stinging indictment of inflated and brutal masculine racist war practice. The “cops of the world” are conquerors of land and sea and women. The conquered are told to “bring their daughters around to the port” so that the cops of the world can “pick and choose as we please” and then get down on their knees.