Posted on 09/13/2012 9:17:37 AM PDT by Impala64ssa
NEW YORK (AP) — Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan says the stigma of slavery ruined America and he doubts the country can get rid of the shame because it was “founded on the backs of slaves.” The veteran musician tells Rolling Stone that in America “people (are) at each other’s throats just because they are of a different color,” adding that “it will hold any nation back.” He also says blacks know that some whites “didn’t want to give up slavery.” The 71-year-old Mr. Dylan said, “If slavery had been given up in a more peaceful way, America would be far ahead today.” When asked if President Obama was helping to shift a change, Mr. 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
What a stupid thread - just like the other one with the same title. I have to agree with wideawake. So many are so quick to leap to knee-jerk conclusions about what Dylan was implying - it reminded me of a phrase one of the lost causers likes to say: “The hit dog howls”.
I would reject the word “ruined” - that’s a bit over the top. The Particular Institution certainly added an unnecessary amount of misery and offered an opportunity for unscrupulous schemers to try to tear our country apart.
We could try to edit what he said -- entirely off-the-cuff in a throwaway interview -- to make it more accurate or responsible, but I suspect it's something that will be provocative for a few days and then forgotten.
The basic idea -- I guess -- is something we had 20 hours or so of in Ken Burns's Civil War documentary. It shouldn't really shock people.
You also have to take into account that Dylan (or Zimmerman) was born into a different America. The America that he's talking about may not have much in common with the one people live in today.
How does one refer to Bob Dylan as talentless and not feel foolish? He’s one of the titanic American figures of the 20th century.
Thank God for Bob Dylan as he provokes fools to reveal themselves!
To call his “contributions” to history as “titanic” about sizes up his career. More myth than anything else. You’d have to be stoned outta your gourd to consider his whiney nasal mumblings as anything remotely approaching musical.
Thanks for the ping!
He’s a songwriter first and foremost. And back in his 1960s and 70s prime he did not mumble at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwqhdRs4jyA
Traveling Wilburys - End Of The Line
“Can’t stand his whiney nasal singing!”
I hesitated before I posted that comment because I never thought Dylan was any good. Awful voice and his songs were cloying.
It was more a reference to Anne Coulter than anything else. Sorry to have jarred you.
Don’t tell me what I meant. I know what’s in my head, you don’t.
Reconstruction was WORSE than slavery. Read a freakin book.
Show me where I am factually wrong or take your “significant other” and go away.
How retarded. I’ve lost nothing and have only stated facts.
Demonstrate that I’m wrong or shut up.
He is a great songwriter, but as a singer, he is worst than Tom Waits bleating to an airdrill. He sounded horrible in the 1960s, and he actually got WORST. Bob Dylan though is a sacred cow to music critics. He could record his farts and would get a standing ovation and 5 star reviews from Rolling Song.
“I don’t believe in Zimmerman.” ~ John Lennon, 1970
You wrote:
the white slaves (former Confederates) owned by those states in the north that enslaved them
No white former Confederates were enslaved by "those states in the north", or by any state of the Union, or by the Union itself.
The demonstration of your error is the fact that no deeds of ownership of such human property exist.
Wrong! The states were sovereign. Southern SOVEREIGN states left the union. The union brought them back at gun point.
That there is a white female slave market in the Middle East TODAY with no deeds of ownership in existence is demonstration of the fact that you don’t have the slightest idea what you are talking about.
Enslaved = slavery.
Period.
No they were not, in point of fact.
After the Constitution was ratified, the individual states were no longer sovereigns, as the Constitution makes explicitly clear.
Now you’re just making up stuff as you go along.
I can show you where the Constitution comments on the matter demonstrating that I am correct. Can you?
Look at the 10th Amendment. It was crafted to protect the power and sovereignty in the states because the Anti-Federalist clearly understood the tyrannical nature of a single, federal level of control.
Hardly.
I can show you where the Constitution comments on the matter demonstrating that I am correct. Can you?
Certainly. A preliminary question is: what does it mean to be sovereign?
A sovereign entity has the ultimate legal jurisdiction in its territory - there is no legal appeal above it.
A sovereign entity has the sole power of declaring its territory to be at war with another sovereign entity.
A sovereign entity has the sole power of concluding a treaty with other sovereign entities.
A sovereign entity has the power to determine what shall be used as legal tender it its territory and to regulate the value of that legal tender.
A sovereign entity has the power to regulate imports and exports.
The Constitution clearly gives these sovereign powers to the federal government. Individual states cannot make wars, cannot conclude treaties, cannot decide what will be legal tender, cannot regulate imports and exports, and, most importantly of all, cannot be the ultimate legal authority in disputes.
The most important part of the Constitution - which eliminates any ambiguity on the issue of sovereignty - is this:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
The laws of the United States, and its lawmaking authority, are the supreme law and preempt the constitution and laws of any individual state. Right there, in black and white.
Look at the 10th Amendment.
Please, let's.
It states:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
It's quite clear. If the states were to be sovereigns under the 10th Amendment, it would mean that there were sovereign powers that the Constitution did not delegate to the United States and that those sovereign powers would then reside in the individual states instead.
The problem, of course, is that the Constitution vests all the powers of sovereignty (warmaking, treatymaking, regulation of external trade, regulation of monetary value, final legal appeal) in the United States.
The powers that the 10th Amendment leaves to the states are not sovereign powers, but subsidiary powers of local, not national, jurisdiction.
because the Anti-Federalist clearly understood the tyrannical nature of a single, federal level of control
A Federalist, not the Anti-Federalists (who were opposed to any Constitution), wrote the 10th Amendment. In fact, the very same Federalist who wrote the supremacy clause I quoted above.
He wrote it because the ratifying states wanted to make clear that their local jurisdiction would not be eliminated - namely that the constitutional sovereignty of the United States was indeed federal and not consolidated.
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