Really, Mr. Dylan? Even in this day there’s a great portion of humanity that pays nothing more than lip service to the ideal of civil liberty. Do they not also have little but scorn and contempt for the American ideals “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...”?
Where do we find any great regard for these American Ideals in the chaos that exist in great parts of the basket case that is Africa? But, that’s hardly a civilized part of the world. Aside from murderous tribal pogroms, ‘blood diamonds’ and other tales of human atrocities come to mind.
Can we say that the Islamic world has let go its affection for slavery? How can we be sure . . . given that the Islamic culture has no scruples in lying to foreign cultures? And, God knows, Islamics abuse their women and the “infidels” in their own territory without mercy, while engaging in widespread human servitude behind the closed doors of their compounds.
Asian cultures are notorious for poorer families selling their daughters into servitude, and even the most advanced Asian countries seem to display an amazing tolerance for women held in bondage for the purposes of prostitution. We see the same attitude rampant in Eastern Europe.
On a wider scale, it’s problematic how much the world holds slavery an abomination when so many societies around the world routinely indulge in speculations about how much of their members’ energies, wealth, and labor should be harnessed for the benefit of other members of those societies.
In our own experience, for at least the past one hundred years, we have been witness to a government and a bureaucracy engaging in every scheme they can devise to control as much of our lives as they can muster. These are not American Ideals.
But, to the extent the world really does think slavery an abomination, whence came its inspiration if not from American Ideals? Was Abraham Lincoln a Slaver, Mr. Dylan?
Here we go.