Hedges begins: "Today I will teach my final American history class of the semester to prison inmates. We have spent five weeks reading Howard Zinn's 'A People's History of the United States.'"
Portrait, historian Howard Zinn, 1922-2010, 06/15/90. (photo: People's History)
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If you were to read Howard Zinn's book, Mr. Botkin, you would see that he focuses a great deal on the positive, much more so than most history books. Granted, it's the positive of successful and brave resistance, which is not likely what you mean. But it's one of the strongest "feel good" history books I've read, even though much of it also makes you pissed off.
in recently declassified papers available on
the official CIA website. In every case it backs up Prof. Zinn's information.
It has long been my contention that when one has knowledge, one discusses the issues. When one is uncertain, one simply disparages the opinions of others. When one knows nothing, one sinks to ad hominem attacks.
"... when one has knowledge, one discusses the issues. When one is uncertain, one simply disparages the opinions of others. When one knows nothing, one sinks to ad hominem attacks."
Eleanor Roosevelt
US diplomat & reformer (1884 - 1962)
Mr. Krumm, Contemporary education in America is directed from a foundational position in the ideas of Rousseau. If you read my comment, you should be able to discern that it was not a response to Professor Zinn's history, but to the disservice to students done by Mr. Hedges. Texts are the tools of teachers.
Rousseau promoted notions that led to the rise of the Sans Coulottes, or rather the rise of those who used the power of the Sans Coulottes. A reign of terror results often when cynical leaders harness ignorant masses to their wills. Liberal education is the cure for what ails us all. Reading skills and thinking skills go hand in hand. Together they might untie the knots that agenda driven dabblers in history have bequeathed us.
could have used his book in our history classes. I have given away copies of his book to young people I know, that show an interest. (You can get used ones really cheap). I hope this honors him in some way.
Mark D and John S, I hardly know how to begin when I see that you seem not to know that a liberal education is one of extensive emphasis on literature, science, math, biology, history and the entire spectrum of human achievement. In Mr. Hedges essay, there is little evidence of anything more complex than outgrowths of Marxist ideology. Instead of fostering a love for humanity and history we find that, "Zinn's book ... is revered because these men intimately know racism, manipulation, poverty, abuse and the lies peddled by the powerful." Reverence might best be given something greater than this. I might not be alone in seeing this as purposeful encouragement of the antisocial attitudes and behaviors that resulted in criminality.
Perhaps studying King Lear or The Tempest might foster a sense of tragedy that transcends ego.
That is why these two gentlemen are not invited to any gathering of vultures which constitutes the Legislature, Executive and Judicial Branches of the USA government.
That is why our nation has degraded into what it has become today. Fools like Hannity, Beck, Rumsfeld and O'Reilly are preferable than intellectuals forces like Zinn, Chomsky and many others.
Truth, human values, civil rights, democracy, international cooperation, freedom, liberty are secondary to greed, corruption, lies and deception in the present way of life in the US now.
Are there any options? No, the two-party political system is too embedded in the USA.
History reduced to an idiological tool is no longer history.
Is pedantry to be confused with grammar or indication of inconvenient facts? Resplendent definition? Hardly. Ms Bianchi offered an oxymoronic aphorism that began, "... when one has knowledge, one discusses the issues,..." Mr. Zinn certainly displays no complete system of knowledge in his book. It is rather a rant against western culture filled with one-sided, simplified declarations of the unfairness of life. Reading a representative collection of primary documents concerning any period he touches will give a considerably different impression of the meaning of those events to any coherent conception of historical events. Ex. Pequoit War, the entry of Cortez into Tenochtitlan, Columbus and the Caribbean cannibals, ad nauseum. Google will help you toward better sources of information. You might even enter a study of Islamic influences on Spanish culture from 711-1492 AD.
Good luck and may God bless your study.
UNTIL
REALITY CHANGES YOUR PERCEPTION
That's pretty much the only defense I've heard for people like Zinn. Everything else is just hypothetical let's-all-ignore-what-amazing-things-we've-accomplished-so-far and how the world actually works whitewashing. Communism worked great, Zinn...until it and Keynesian economics were discredited 80-something years ago.
If I worked for the Fed the only reason I would "fear" people like that is that they gum up the works with contrived bullshit and theories that we have to constantly tell them over and over again that they don't work.
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