Credit to The Matt Walch Report – March 5, 2022

These are volatile times. Dangerous times. War has broken out in Eastern Europe. If the crisis is not handled with prudence, resolve, restraint, and foresight, the conflict could well spread across the globe, sending us barreling headfirst into another world war. This is a time for competent, assured, intelligent leadership. It’s unfortunate, then, that the western world is led by the most pathetic collection of morally bankrupt halfwits our civilization has ever seen. These are the people we must entrust to guide us through this calamity without getting 50 million people killed in the process. Frankly, I don’t love our odds.

Case in point: With the world teetering on the brink of nuclear destruction, Congress — which can never be accused of having its priorities straight — got together to work on making lynching illegal. Yes, that violent act which literally hasn’t occurred one single time in this country in at least forty years. That’s the thing they decided to focus on. They might as well pass a law prohibiting the use of giant catapults to storm fortresses. Maybe next they can finally legally ban people from burning witches at the stake. How about a law abolishing the transatlantic slave trade? 

Now, I’m not being totally fair. They didn’t just work on outlawing lynching. They also tried to pass a bill banning something called “hair discrimination.” The Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair, or CROWN, Act, would make it illegal to discriminate against hair styles worn by black people. You might be thinking that discrimination against black people is already illegal, and it is, but this bill would make a black person’s hairstyle it’s own protected class. Black people would be protected from discrimination twice over, once for their whole body and a second time for the top of their heads. Eventually I’m sure Democrats will pass laws specifically protecting each marginalized body part. We’ve covered head discrimination. What about shoulder discrimination? What about knees and toes? 

But the Dreadlock Protection Act of 2022 didn’t pass. That was one bit of empty virtue signaling that Republicans refused to go along with it. The same cannot be said for the anti-lynching act however, which was an even more dangerous and grotesque form of virtue signaling. As for that, Republicans were fully on board — save for three who rightfully voted against the measure. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act was passed with near unanimous support from both parties. The bill now makes it a federal hate crime to lynch someone, or to conspire to lynch someone. 

Of course, to restate the obvious, nobody is getting lynched in modern America anyway. The last case was in 1981, five years before I was born. And that was an extraordinary event because it was the first such occurrence in decades. Since my parents were born, you could count the number of lynchings on one hand, and you may not need all your fingers. Since I was born, it hasn’t happened at all — not once — anywhere in the country. 

Does that mean it should be legal? Of course not. And the good news is that it’s not legal. It’s always been illegal. If you lynch a person today, with or without this bill, you will go to prison for a very long time. In fact, lynching isn’t just already illegal. Race-based lynching — lynchings committed for racist reasons — are illegal twice over. Lynching is murder or attempted murder, which is illegal. If it’s racially motivated then it’s race based violence, which is a hate crime. No black people are getting lynched in America, but if such a horrific event did occur, it would be illegal twice — illegal on the state and federal level. Illegal and then illegal again. This law makes it illegal a third time. Why stop there? Let’s make it illegal four times. Let’s make it illegal every year. By 2030, there will be over a dozen laws outlawing a crime that nobody is committing. 

This is true even if you expand the definition of lynching to include things that are not lynching, which is what the Left has done. In order to make the case that lynching is still a problem in the United States, they’ll point to George Floyd or Ahmad Arbery as lynching victims. But words have meanings and those don’t apply. Besides, if “lynching” now just means any violence committed against a black man by a white man for allegedly racist reasons, then, again, that’s already illegal. A Wikipedia article on lynching in the United States lists Arbery as a victim. Yet he was not lynched, and anyway, his killers have already been convicted of murder and hate crimes. Even under the expanded definition of lynching — in fact, especially under the expanded definition — there is no need for this law. 

So what is the point? Why are they doing this? Well, the primary point, obviously, is to virtue signal, treating the law itself like some kind of Twitter hashtag. Now all of these lawmakers can appear in campaign videos declaring that they bravely took a stand and finally, once and for all, banned this terrible practice. They will just hope that their constituents are too stupid to realize that it was already banned, and also that they were wasting time on this empty stunt while the world stood at the precipice of nuclear annihilation.

 But there’s something else, too. And this is what makes this something far more sinister than an empty political stunt. It is also why spineless Republicans should have refused to go along with the charade. The law is meant to send a message that lynching is still a current and urgent problem in the United States. It is all part of the overarching effort to paint our country as systemically racist against minorities. It’s a narrative booster. That’s what our leaders are concerned with, at a time like this. Because they are not leaders. We have no leaders in this country. Only parasites and con artists playing the part.