I am a back-seat driver from America

They drive to the left on Falls Road

The man at the wheel's name is Seamus

We pass a child on the corner he knows

And Seamus says, "Now what chance has that kid got?"

And I say from the back, "I don't know"

He says, "There's barbed wire at all of these exits:

and there ain't no place on Belfast for that kid to go"

***It's a hard life, It's a hard life, It's a very hard life

It's a hard life wherever you go***

If we poison our children with hatred

Then the hard life is all that they'll know

A cafeteria line in Chicago

The fat man in front of me

Is calling black people trash to his children

....he's the only trash here I see

And I'm thinking this man wears a white hood

In the night when his children should sleep

But, they'll slip to their window and they'll see him

And they'll think that white hood's all they need

If I'd been a child in the sixties

When dreams could be held through TV

With Disney, and Cronkite, and Martin Luther

Oh, I'd believe, I'd believe, I'd believe

Now, I am the back-seat driver from America

And I am not at the wheel of control

I am guilty, I am war and I am the root of all evil

Lord, and I can't drive on the left side of the road