28 January 2011 Same song different group?

The John Birch Society by Michael Brown



“Oh, we're meetin' at the courthouse at eight o'clock tonight

You just walk in the door and take the first turn to the right

Be careful when you get there, we hate to be bereft

But we're taking down the names of everybody turning left



Oh, we're the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society

Here to save our country from a communistic plot

Join the John Birch Society, help us fill the ranks

To get this movement started we need lots of tools and cranks…

“We'll teach you how to spot 'em in the cities or the sticks

For even Jasper Junction is just full of Bolsheviks

The CIA's subversive and so's the FCC

There's no one left but thee and we, and we're not sure of thee…”

This song was performed by the Chad Mitchell Trio in glorious three-part harmony many times on many college campuses and in other venues around the nation. I never saw them in concert. They broke up for a time in 1965. They are now playing together again.

http://www.chadmitchelltrio.com/index2.html

This song has been in my mind a lot lately as well as another they performed, “Barry’s Boys.”

We're the bright young men

Who wanna go back to nineteen-ten

We're Barry's boys

We're the kids with a cause

Yes a government like grandmama's

We're Barry's boys

We're the new kind of youth at your Alma Mater

Back to silver standards and solid Goldwater

Back to when the poor were poor and rich were rich

And you felt so damn secure just knowing which were which



We're the kids who agree

To be social without security

We're Barry's boys

'Cause his hat's in the ring

Where Westbrook Pegler once was king

Now he's too left wing

So if you don't recognize any old Red China

Or Canada, or Britain, or South Carolina

You too can join the crew

Tippecanoe and Nixon too

Back to Barry

Back to cash and carry

Back with Barry's boys

Every time I hear some inane gibberish from Palin, some flaming idiocy from Bachman, I recall these songs and think about how little difference there is in the John Birch Society of 1964 and the teavangelists of 2011. Even more disturbing is the realization that Barry Goldwater would seem to be too liberal to the GOPers and teavangelists we now have trying to roll our government back to the antebellum period. Goldwater was conservative but he was not a racist, not an anti-Semite, and he was not lacking in intellect or education.

Dinner tonight will be a homemade adaptation of Vietnamese Pho.



Shabbat Shalom