Posted on 09/12/2012 11:28:13 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Folk rock legend Bob Dylan has some strong words about America that many of his compatriots may not want to hear: He says the stigma of slavery ruined America and he doubts whether the country can get rid of the shame because it was “founded on the backs of slaves.”
Dylan spoke to Rolling Stone for a cover story that coincides with the release of his 35th studio album, “Tempest.” Dylan has long been an outspoken critic of American culture and its inherent inequalities, particularly during the 1960s when his songs “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” voiced his generation’s support for civil rights and anger at the Vietnam War.
In his interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan, who has won just about every music and songwriting award on the planet, seems intent not so much on attacking America for its racist history but observing that racism has long been holding the country back.
“People (are) at each other’s throats just because they are of a different color,” he said. “It will hold any nation back.”
A 71-year-old man born in Minnesota at a time when blacks in many parts of the country couldn’t eat in white restaurants or use white water fountains, Dylan has seen a great deal of America’s progress and evolution during the past century—all the way to the election of the first black president. But clearly he has not seen enough progress. And he thinks it all goes back to the country’s founding.
He tells Rolling Stone that blacks know that some whites “didn’t want to give up slavery.” Only after a civil war cleaved the nation in two did slavery come to a reluctant end—after more than 600,000 Americans (including 260,000 Southerners) died in a war that started because the South wanted to preserve the institution.
“If slavery had been given up in a more peaceful way, America would be far ahead today,” Dylan observes.
When the magazine asked if the election of President Obama was helping to bring about a change, Dylan says: “I don’t have any opinion on that. You have to change your heart if you want to change.”
The magazine’s new issue hits newsstands Friday.
The UK's great emancipator is a fellow named Wilburforce
This is Bob Dylan talking. How are we sure the interviewer even could understand what he was saying?
But what do Boxcar Willie and Junior Samples think? And Stringbean?
Liberals are ruining America
EVERY country has engaged in slavery at one time or another throughout history. How many of the others have done what America has done for the descendants of their former slaves? KMA BOBBY!!! You braindead moron. Take your whining crap somewhere else. France is really popular these days.
Thomas Jefferson Wrote:
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. . . .
And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other. . . . And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?
That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.
Typical Lib. So worried about slavery from the past, but what is he doing about the 27,000,000 slaves in the world today? Nothing, they don’t matter according to his political world view.
FUBD
Only white people are racist you know.
Dylan is a timeless folk singer, he was never an anti-Vietnam war based phenomenon.
I agree with this statement. For one thing the south would have been a lot better off. And I am glad to see Dylan did not take the Obama as a solution bait.
The Democrat party institutionalized racism in many ways.
The Democrat Party is the home of slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, racial paranoia, the promotion of black genocide through abortion, the disintegration of the family through the government plantation (welfare) system. The root cause and home of racial tension is now, and has always been, the Democrat Party. If more Republicans simply remembered and communicated these historical facts the sooner we might undo the damage caused by the left.
I Never liked his music...Or him, for that matter.
And yet another waste of sperm rises to spew his anti-American gibberish.
Bob Dylan’s opinions are those of an idiot.
Bob Dylan’s music sucks.
Go Eff yourself Bob Dylan!
As presented the quotes seem complete and stand well on their own. What possible mitigating context can there be?
The answer, my friend, is blow it out your a**.
My favorite Dylan song is when he sings: aaa aaaaa aa aaaaaa aaaa a aaaa aaaaaaaaa aaaaaa
Man that is deep!
He’s the most untalented hack “songwriter” a lousy guitarist, and he CANNOT sing.
He’s one of the most over-rated musicians of all time.
Now he’s just sufferring from old git dementia.
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