Every now and then, it can be an educational experience to take a trip inside the mind of a conservative "intellectual." Take, for example, former Reagan political director Jeffrey Lord who has written an anti-Shirley Sherrod screed in The American Spectator.
Lord initially applauded Sherrod's firing, but he now apologizes for doing so. Nonetheless, he still condemns Sherrod. Why? Because, he says, Sherrod was incorrect when she said that a relative of hers had been lynched. In his words:
Plain as day, Ms. Sherrod says that Bobby Hall, a Sherrod relative, was lynched. As she puts it, describing the actions of the 1940s-era Sheriff Claude Screws: "Claude Screws lynched a black man."
This is not true. It did not happen.
The strange thing is that Lord acknowledges that Hall was beaten to death by Sheriff Screws, who dragged Hall's prone body through the country courthouse as he died. The murder was apparently a result of a conflict that began when Screws confiscated a firearm from Hall. Screws didn't think blacks should be allowed to own guns. After Hall sued Screws to regain possession of his weapon, Screws went berserk and beat Hall to death.
When the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division charged Screws with violating Hall's civil rights, an all-white jury found Screws guilty, but the Supreme Court reversed that conviction on a 5-4 basis. It is on that narrow decision -- in which all nine members of the court agreed that Screws had beaten Hall to death -- that Lord's entire attack on Sherrod rests.
The State of Georgia could have charged Screws with homicide, but did not. The U.S. government, however, could only prosecute Screws for depriving Hall of his constitutional rights. And although even in the majority opinion Hall's murder was described as "shocking and revolting," the case turned on the court's interpretation of the Federal law making it illegal for law enforcement to willfully deprive someone of their constitutional rights. The majority chose a "narrow construction" of the law, determining that on a technical level, Screws did not violate Federal law.
Based on this technical determination, and this determination alone, Lord accuses Shirley Sherrod of lying when she said Bobby Hall was lynched.
The amazing thing about Lord's assault on Sherrod is that once he finishes arguing that Sherrod lied about Bobby Hall's lynching, Lord then proceeds to blame FDR and the progressive movement for allowing Claude Screws to get away with the lynching that Lord just said never happened.
The next time Ms. Sherrod visits Washington, she can take a trip up to Capitol Hill.
First, she can visit the Supreme Court of the United States, and ponder the connection between progressivism and racism. Take a look inside the ornate chamber where on May 7, 1945, Justice Hugo Black, a lifetime member of the Ku Klux Klan honored with a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court, an honor made possible because he used his racism to support the New Deal, voted to overturn the conviction of Sheriff Claude Screws for beating Bobby Hall to death.
Then a short stroll adown the street and she can visit another of Capitol Hill's enduring monuments: The Richard B. Russell United States Senate Office Building. As she strolls down its old marble corridors, surrounded by the offices of powerful United States Senators and their staffs, she perhaps can take the time to reflect once again on the night her father was murdered. And that the very building in which she walks is named in honor of the progressive/racist Democrat who was without doubt responsible for helping lots of Georgia farmers on a scale even Sherrod might not be able to imagine. But to do that he had to help create and nurture the atmosphere that made her father's death -- and that of Bobby Hall -- possible.
Perhaps, just perhaps, she'll even wonder if she understands just how much her own career and the things she said in that famous speech are sounding to some ears ever-so-slightly just like those of Justice Black and Senator Russell. Down the scale a bit -- a bureaucrat is not the same as a Senator or a Justice -- but still finding herself on the same scale nonetheless. A little concern for the poor folks here, a few government farm dollars and jobs over there and -- oh yes- a little dropping of the race card here and there so those jobs and dollars keep flowing.
To recap Lord's argument:
- Shirley Sherrod lied when she described Bobby Hall's death as a lynching because the Supreme Court never said it was a lynching (even though everybody agrees a Sheriff beat Hall to death and dragged him through the county courthouse while on his deathbed).
- Progressives who sounded an awful lot like Shirley Sherrod are responsible for creating the conditions that led to Bobby Hall's murder because the only way you can advocate for working people is to engage in race-baiting.
So what's the moral of Lord's story? I guess he's trying to say that the only true progressives are conservative. And the only people who can truly put an end to racism are right-wingers. Like Andrew Breitbart. Or something like that.
Yikes.