The past month’s news about our national government’s acceleration towards tyranny (“arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority”) made me recall the most memorable lines in “Like a Rolling Stone,” arguably Bob Dylan’s best work, and according to Rolling Stone magazine the best rock and roll song ever.
Dylan’s masterpiece is a sarcastic six-minute “See, I told you so” directed at a condescending high-society princess. She thought she had it all, only to see it disappear at the hands of a betraying, conniving beau. As a result, she is forced to fight for her everyday survival like most of the rest of us.
In his final verse, Dylan tells her:
When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose. You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Thomas Jefferson
"If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here." - Barack Obama, June 7, 2013