Comments Posted By ZAC D.
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IN DEFENSE OF HOWARD ZINN - SORT OF
I actually caught "the people speak" last night and could not finish watching it. It was that horrible. Watching these actors trying to act like American patriots was pathetic, espeically since I knew everything they were saying was complete bias propaganda. The program was meant for the historically challenged. If howard zinn advocates that there is no such thing as a fact then I say 9/11 was a inside job. Obama said: Words Matter. So, we should make them live up to what they preach. Otherwise slogans such as "9/11 was inside job" become the reality.
As for howard zinn's book "A people's history of the untied states of America" unfortunately there are too many absences of footnotes to sources.
Other problems with his book include....
- There was no "Spain" in 1492, there was Castilla and Aragon (with separate Queen and King respectively, although they were married).
- The Court of the Crown of Castilla wasn't in Madrid until 1561 (it was in Toledo by that time).
- It is not exact that Hernan Cortes turned Aztec against Aztec, but the tribes that were being slaughtered by the Aztecs.The problem with Zinn's view is his dismissal of historical context. He presents the United States as a criminal state and provides us with a list of its crimes.
The question is, Are these crimes what is "distinctive" about the United States? Of course there are awful things this country has done, and Americans should certainly know about them, but for the most part the awful things we have done are not novel. How many societies have been hostile to "the other"? How many societies have kept the territory they have won in military engagements? How many societies have condoned slavery and sexual inequality? In how many societies has greed been a major human motivation?
The short answer to these questions? "All of them."
Yes, there are some areas in which I think we do poorly in comparison to other societies in our respect for education and for our cultural heritage, in remembering to value the life of the mind and aesthetic appreciation, but Zinn doesn't have all that much to say about our actual weaknesses.
What is different about the United States is the way we have defended, through a long and sometimes bloody series of struggles, liberty and universal equality under the law. Surely there have been many evil Americans, which (given human nature) is not a surprise, but on balance we have been an unprecedented force for good in the world.
The myth that Native Americans were saintly innocents has been debunked very thoroughly by both historians and anthropologists. This of course does not excuse the behavior of Europeans, which was sometimes evil, but the idea that Europeans were "especially" vicious can be maintained only by ignoring the history of other peoples.
On the other hand, European civilization has contributed greatly to the welfare of the world. Since the Industrial Revolution, global life expectancy has increased dramatically, as has global wealth and the quality of global health. You should also remember that slavery was a global phenomenon "throughout history" until Europeans (primarily by means of the British Navy) decided they had a moral duty to end it.
The non-Western countries that have benefited the most have been the ones that have adopted free markets and representative democracy. (And much of the non-Western world "has" asked for democracy and "does" value it.) The non-Western countries that have lagged have generally been the ones that have adopted radical leftist ideologies. If all the nonsense about capitalist "exploitation" were true, then the "exploited" capitalist countries would be poor and the countries that adopted Zinn's favored model (anti-capitalist, "anti-imperialist") would have prospered. This is decidedly "not" the case.
However, I will give him credit as he says quite openly that he has no desire to write objectively. Here he is in his own words: "From the start of my teaching and writing, I had no illusions about "objectivity", if that meant avoiding a point of view. I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or any one telling a story) was forced to choose, from an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian."
Zinn aims to advance his ideology and his "interests," not to give a balanced depiction of historical reality. In effect, Zinn is a liar, and a liar who defends ideas that have produced almost nothing outside of mass misery and mass murder.
If your looking for good counter books to Zinn's nonsense this hoilday season I suggest reading: Paul Johnson's "A History of the American People" and Larry Schweikart's "A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror." One other book I would suggest reading is
"48 Liberal Lies About American History".Perpare yourselves for the progressive propaganda now that Obama is president it will be coming at you ferociously. Even the history channel has sold out.
Comment Posted By ZAC D. On 15.12.2009 @ 03:23
