Bobby Bare - Lynching Party

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In my lifetime we've gone from a time where the lynch mob would drag possibly unconvictable prisoners from their cells and string them up, to a much more enlightened, gentle, Progressive era:

Lee apologized on Wednesday evening and offered to compensate an elderly Florida couple who had to flee their home after he tweeted their address on March 23, claiming it was that of the parents of George Zimmerman, the man who killed teenager Trayvon Martin.

But according to the Smoking Gun, on Wednesday, [Roseanne] Barr tweeted the correct address for Zimmerman's parents, then deleted the tweet, then threatened to tweet it again.

 “If Zimmerman isn't arrested I'll rt his address again. maybe go 2 his house myself," Barr tweeted.

Image via Wikipedia

On May 25, 1911, a young black man in Okemah, OK was about to be lynched by a mob.  His mother, acting as mothers do, rushed to plead with the mob to spare the life of her child.

They strung her up, too.  They raped her first, though.

It's a truism that Progressives believe in the perfectibility of mankind, while conservatives believe in original sin.  It's been said that an optimist believes that we live in the best of all possible worlds while the pessimist fears that this is indeed so.  I'm quite interested in how Ms. Barr and the rest of the Progressive Mob baying for George Zimmerman's blood think that they're "perfecting" mankind here by publishing Mrs. Zimmerman's address.

Educated people know that this question has been asked before, in a different guise.  As a student of history, I fear that I know the answer all too well:

Communism probably killed at least 85 million people, and might have killed as many as 140 million people.

But this time is different, right?  Because tweeting someone's parent's home address to the Mob would never result in blood, right?  And if it did, well nobility of purpose and all that.  Too bad about the rape.  Mistakes were made.  Eggs, omelets.

And so I must say once again that I do not think that Progressives are smarter or nicer than the rest of us.  I do not think they are better educated than us, in either history or music.  Because if they were, they'd remember this song.  And those days.



Lynching Party (Songwriter: unknown)

The Lynch mob gathered in the square across from the jail
Young Billy watched them from his cell and felt his courage fail
Bill swore he wasn't guilty but the evidence was plain
Tomorrow he would go on trial for killing Mary Jane
They shouted beat the prisoner hardy we're gonna have a Lynchin' party
Gonna hang him high watch him die for killing Mary Jane

The mob is closer to the jail excitement all around
The deputies kept moving back afraid to hold their ground
Then the young girl cried you cowards but the Lynch mob searched ahead
Dragged young Billy from that jail and soon the kid was dead
They shouted beat the prisoner hardy...

The weeks went by and no one spoke about it anymore
Or seemed to see the wreath Bill's mother hung upon the door
Then one night they dragged a ragged hobo from a train
And he confessed he was the one who killed young Mary Jane
They shouted beat the prisoner hardy...
Gonna hang him high watch him die for killing Mary Jane

What an odd turn that people who are so moved by Strange Fruit see justice at work here, or that they do not at least condemn the injustice.  And yet still they somehow think that they occupy some sort of Moral High Ground, while they whip up the mob.  Odd how they do not see that their type is sadly legion in this Republic's history.  They are but the latest in a long line, and are unlikely to be the last.

Our country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob.

- Ida B. Wells