Howard Zinn, the progressive Marxist historian, has died at the age of 87. Some choice quotes:
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
In war, good guys always become bad guys.
Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals the fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such as world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.
Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.
Your thoughts?
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Thoughts go out to his family and loved ones.
If only revisionist history would be buried with him.
Thoughts? That nothing he says has any bearing on reality as I see it. That's his "construct", not mine.
This man stands alone in his efforts to create peace and understanding and show the world that war destroys everything in it's path; including the vanquisher and the vanquished. He was a WWII vet who saw firsthand the results of war. I am sorry I never had the chance to hear him speak in person. His legacy will live on; Howard, you've earned your rest.
RIP Howard Zinn.
"And in such as world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners."
What happens when the supposed victims are actually the executioners? Or worse. We just let the "thinking people" tell us who is whom. Debate over.
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
And you disagree? LOL!
We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
That almost sounds like…..war hero Smedly Butler! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
You guys really need to get over this war-religion. Funny how so many so-called Christians even go along with it!
In war, good guys always become bad guys.
Yep. Kind of a variation of "War is Hell" which the chickenhawks don't seem to mind acknowledging.
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Hell has another resident tonight, but don't worry he has plenty of friends like Che, Ted Kennedy, Saddam and Mao Tse Tung to keep him company. I bet Matt Damon cries himself to sleep tonight.
One should only say good of the dead.
Howard Zinn is dead.
Good.
Funny.
The immortal Howard Zinn died. I by chance was talking to a friend of mine tonight, who had Zinn as a Professor at Boston College.. He had some interesting stories tonight. Now if we could quickly get Noam Choamsky to join him, it'd be a "two-fer".
What was it the great Archie Bunker used to say ? The only good communist is a dead communist !!!
Another pinko on the ash heep of history. Good ridance.
My heart aches for Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and other Zinn-worshipping progressives in this, their time of mourning.
No wait…that was just gas.
Nine out of 10 Brutal Third World dictators agree, Howard Zinn was a man all Americans should emulate.
I wish no one dead. That said, I also wish that the youth of this nation had never been brainwashed by his propaganda. It will take us years to undo the damage his philosophy has permeated into the minds of college students. Luckily many will realize with time it is crap….it just takes a few years of living and working for most of us to shed the lies. Especially during this time when we are living under the thumb of Progressives. Thankfully this bullying is not on the level it could be if they were as further along with their agenda. The American people are still smarter than their politicians. My condolences to Howard's family.
These are not so-called Christians…these are the true-blue Christians that have encouraged hate, prejudice, killing, corruption, greed, and innumerable other Christian traits such as these. Jesus wants nothing to do with Christians.
WWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! Put a sock in it hippie.
Its a pity this troubled man’s work is better known than Dr.R.J. Rummel who wrote “Death by Government”. Unlike Zin, who was adept to cherry picking trivia for his worldview, Dr.Rummel has done exhaustive statistical analysis to arrive at his theory of peace by democracy. Dr.Rummel is also credited with creating the term “democide” to describe the wider costs of oppressive, non-democratic republican tyrrany. Zinn’s work is a Yugo parked next to a space shuttle in comparison.
Howard Zinn was Jewish, you know.
That voice coming out of your toaster is NOT Jesus.
Touche'……
You made spit my wine!
I wonder how he's going to blame this one on imperialist White Europeans.
That really is O.K. with TheFonz, his dream of a world without Jews is one step closer.
So's Norm Finkelstein. The problem is Zionism which ever some non-Jews are the worst offenders. Zionism is a cult like Scientology.
As a teacher of history, Zinn embarassed me.
What I think is that the quote falls into the error of believing that by *omission* one can avoid having blood on one's hands.
A failure to act, or a refusal to act, does not avoid guilt.
But many people seem to think so. Many people seem to think that the risk of error can be avoided by inaction. If nothing is attempted, no mistakes can be made. Is someone who stands by while something horrible happens innocent of the crime?
But when it comes to human horror only one thing is true. All hands are bloody. By commission or by ommission.
Refusing to accept this might be comfortable, but it is not moral.
He forgot his Abilify this morning….actually its been about two weeks. He's a bit confused!
Wow. Your intelligence is second only to your command of the language.
I can imagine. I am just an average Joe and it embarrassed me too!
For example… if we decide not to go to war, no matter what, because we can not avoid killing innocents… how can we be free of the guilt of the deaths that occur in our absence? We could stop genocide, but never perfectly… do we let it continue? If we do, the graves are full of *our* dead, and the blood is on *our* hands.
And that has to happen some times. It will happen. And the guilt is ours regardless, for the blood of innocents in Darfur, for the blood of innocents in Burma, for the blood of innocents killed by chemical weapons in Iraq, for all of those killed in the ovens in Germany while we debated and hedged. And sometimes letting it happen *is* the best choice or the only choice that can be made. The guilt remains. Intervention means forcibly stopping those preying on their own people and that means making mistakes. The guilt remains.
Accept that and decide what you prefer to be guilty *of*. But don't pretend there is not blood on your hands.
I refuse to take the blame of someone who came before me….just like I will never blame a relative of someone who came against me. I refuse to live under that kind of bondage. It is one of the things that stifles people from evolving into better people. Oh and by the way, no one can evolve into a better person because we are all sinful and need redemption. I am free of your guilt!
Wow an insult to my intelligence by a Howard Zinn loving peacenik. LMFAO
I bet you believe in Global Warming too.
Psychobable…..
Good riddance to a bad polemicist. I hope he gets a real education in true American history in the afterlife, he won't like it and he'll regret writing his book, A People's History of the USA, in the first place.
Zinn's description of governments seems to reflect a mindset that assumes all governments will be just like all that have come before.
Did he not have a clue about what we continue to try to do with our Constitution and Bill of Rights? Did he think that our Constitution and the freedoms it has given us are no different from what all other forms of government were able to do for the governed?
"Consent of the governed" seems to be missing from his construct.
No wars, period? Well, turning the other cheek may be fine in the abstract, but when there's a bullet headed for that same cheek and it happens to be yours, abstractions matter zilch.
Yet another alleged adult suffering from idealism's version of arrested development whipping up followers for another ill-fated Children's Crusade. RIP, but glad you aren't around to do more damage.
Ya his rest in hell.
Get back in the closet you Commie!
The likes of you are responsible for more suffering in the last century than all the wars that came before.
The purpose of war is to destroy those who are trying to destroy you. How does the "winner" of the war get destroyed by surviving? At some point, a nation has to stand against its enemies. Or do you believe that everyone is your friend? Do you believe that belligerents will stop their aggression if you are just nice enough?
My Dad was a veteran of WWII also, who saw the rotting flesh of concentration camp inmates, women and children who were innocent and murdered for political reasons. Do you think that these people do not exist anymore?
At what point, whatsoever, did I even imply generational blame?
I'm talking about what you, now, in your life, chose to act on and chose not to act on.
Turning your own cheek is noble. Allow the bullet and maintain your principles of non-violence or even self-defense.
Deciding for others that their cheek must be turned is obscene. Allowing the bullet to hit someone *else* for your principles of non-violence makes you complicit.
My first exposure to Zinn came just this past semester in my college course on the History of American Cities. "A People's History of the United States" is a required text, but much of it is sheer, misleading rubbish. One thing is certain, he should never ever teach economics…
OMG, I shouldn't think ill either, but I can't help but snicker…lol
I have no guilt for things past or present. That is zinns premise to feel guilty about my life because I am a wealthy American. I act against your ilk who come against the babies of this nation that are aborted on a daily basis. I grieve the decision the left has made to take DDT away from the African nations, whose children are suffering under the plague of malaria. I have seen them shivering from the parasite that is afflicting their bodies. I grieve knowing that the left in my country has been deceptive in their statistic of DDT, because someone decided that it was killing eagles…it was not. And they have taken away a better life for the people of Africa. So don't preach to me about what I have done. I answer to a Higher Being, not you! I live my life without guilt. I have gone to the poor and taught them a trade to fend for themselves and will go back as I can to do more. I have no guilt you talk of…because in my richness I am able to share with the poor. I also believe I talk for many Americans that feel the same way I do and have shared with other to go and help in the poor countries of this world.
And yet the feminists of America will not stand up for the woman in burkas, who are brutalized in the surgical mutilation of their genitilia. Or how they are beheaded because of their husbands decision to be rid of them. Where are the outraged women of the left. Not one fricken word has been uttered about this ever. So, how can you be so sanctimonious and tell me I have blood on my hands. Honey, someone has done a piece of work on you! You are only guilty for what you have done…not others. And if that continues to bother you so much, then contemplate this: God gave His Son, perfectly God and perfectly man, Jesus, who died for your sins. All you have to do is recognize this fact and accept His redemption and be saved and walk in His shoes. It will be the greatest freedom you could ever experience. End of story!
Oh but that is so intolerant! You are sad if this is your response!
I love it!
I honestly think that you are seriously misunderstanding me.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We are saved and redeemed because we are guilty, not because we are not. The sin of omission is as much of a sin as the sin of commission. We are judged by what we do *not* do as much as by what we do.
Zinn is 100% wrong, and the couple of people upthread having snit fits such as Fonz and Genevieve do not accept His redemption even while complaining that "so-called Christians" are missing the obvious love and peace bit or "Jesus would hate Christians."
They think they can be innocent of the evil in the world by refusing to do anything about it.
It's a desire for redemption that comes from finding a way to not-sin, rather than accepting the need for a Savior and the impossibility of being righteous on your own effort.
I agree with you with my whole heart about the need to combat the evil in the world, and I think you latched on to what I said about not avoiding the blood on the hands and thought I was coming from the opposite viewpoint than I am.
The thing is… that war *is* hell and innocents *do* get killed, even as careful as we can be.
Accepting, rather than avoiding, that moral burden is a moral and *aware* choice that men and women make, that they accept because it's necessary, because it must be done, because it is *right* to take action and wrong to follow Zinn's philosophy of protecting yourself above all others.
Look at it this way… Jesus Christ accepted our blood on His hands, our guilt. He was free of any taint and any guilt and anything bad and took all of ours on Himself to save us. What people can do is a pale comparison, a small thing, but we can accept the need to protect others even if it means sacrificing ourselves just a little bit. We can accept that sometimes the right and necessary thing to do is act, go to war, intervene and risk ourselves and risk the inevitable mistakes… because something else is more important than we are.
Zinn's outlook is ultimately selfish, valuing and protecting himself to attain a false righteousness by refusing to act, no matter what.
What I want all of those people who think that being anti-war is automatically moral to understand is that it does nothing at all for them. It's not a moral high ground, it is a moral cess pool.
"including the vanquisher and the vanquished."
Again. Who is whom? I don't wake up and say "God isn't war great." Lee Smith has a book out that I'm interested in reading. His perspective on the Middle East is fresh.
"American elites have a hard time distinguishing between intelligence and cunning, largely because their lives do not depend on them outwitting murderous rivals. In hard places, intelligent people is what the cunning eat for lunch."
Murderous rivals are not an American invention. Either is Utopia.
Not only are you mind-numbingly ignorant, but you're a bigot too. The 20th century was filled with people like you, who in the name of caring for the common man, were responsible for the deaths of 100 million.
Ding! Dong! The wicked witch is dead!
Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!
WHOO HOO!
Maybe we can celebrate by a HUGE book burning!
I'm SO sick of all the BS this idiot dished out and his twisting and LYING about America
Now, if we can only get his crapola out of our colleges and schools, America might have a chance to get back on track..
I hope he burns in hell!
Perhaps where Zinn is going he will meet up with some of his heroes: Mao, Stalin, Lenin, etc…
Die Commie die
All you did was lie
You’re old enough to know better
So die Commie die
Bloe me, beech.
No. It's not.
If you stand by and watch a woman be raped, are you innocent because you didn't rape her?
Trying to flee responsibility for what might go wrong by letting evil people continue unopposed doesn't work. If, for an example related to Zinn and his remarks about the unavoidable consequence of going to war, you determine to never go to war for any reason or any excuse… say, that you will not intervene in Burma to stop the slaughter there because it is inevitable that you will end up killing innocent people because that always happens, do you actually avoid guilt for the innocent people, for the children, who die at the hand of the government you stood by and watched kill them?
I'm not arguing that we're morally compelled to intervene in all cases any more than we can simply decide not to fight, even to defend the weak.
Only that the idea that the decision to "stand by and watch" doesn't keep the blood of anyone's hands. It makes no one innocent or morally superior to those who *try* but who fail or have an imperfect success.
May ten thousand liters of urine soak his grave every year.
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it."
Mark Twain
Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.
I didn't see THAT quote on the TV show.
It's something he claimed Christopher Columbus said.
The road to hell is paved by do-gooder priests of social justice.
In the end, there are no heroes among the wasteland of aborted bodies.
"in war, good guys always become bad guys".A sample quote that goes a long way in explaining this guy's mindset.Complete ideolgical leftist bullcrap.My grandfather was gassed in the trenches in WWI. Sure he had problems dealing with the aftermath but he didn't let it rule or ruin his life. He understood it for what it was and accepted it.He never told me if he killed another human being nor did i care if he did. I loved him for what he was, a MAN.A comment like Mr. Zinn's comes from pure ignorance and/or ideological blindness. Otherwise, rest in peace Mr. Zinn.
Good Night Howard.
This is a very thoughtful, reasoned response. I agree with you 100%.
My bad, and I am sorry I misunderstood what you were saying. I think this argument you made was a bit to philosophical for my concrete brain. When you wrote the last comment it jelled more for me where you were taking your point. I am very black and white in my thinking and hate contemplating what if's. Guess I shouldn't because it obviously shut down my thinking….God knows I am to in need of salvation on my own actions, I cannot even contemplate my sin's of ommission through the actions or inaction of others, to me that is a deep scary place. I guess I am to here and now, thus my problem with Zinn. Please forgive my misunderstanding.
Direct.
Succinct.
Brilliant.
A +1 for you…!
Oh, that's bloody Brilliant…!
A +1 for you as well…!
Where do I sign up…?
The bad news just keeps on coming for lefty lib statists…
Let me quote Zinn in his own words, after he took part in a Communist Party march in New York when he was a young man: “From that moment on I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong with this country. Something rotten at the root.”
I wonder if Zinn understood, finally, that the election of Scott Brown meant that he had failed, finally, utterly, in his life's work to change this country to a socialist slave state. So close, but yet he still failed. And died, knowing he failed.
Now that's a happy thought.
Are you really this bitter inside? I really can't imagine a person like you functioning in the real world, except as an anchor on MSNBC or something.
He was a hypocrite and a liar, but still better than most politicians.
Just what MSNBS needs, another lefty loonie tune to continue to drive their ratings into the cess pool. Hey Fonzie- you could be a TV star- except for that little thing of nobody watching MSNBS (play on words- B.S for BC)
hey, how about a spew alert? I need a new keyboard after that!
Mebbe so. Only a lefty moonbat would presume to castigate christians for unchristian acts in an endless doloop of stupidity.
So ol'howie is dead. How can you tell, does he smell worse than last week?
Loved ones? Castro, Chavez and Zelaya perhaps…
Death Becomes Him!
"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."
-Martin Luther King Jr.-
******************************
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
–Sir Winston Churchill
*********************************
What if they gave a war and nobody came?
Why then the war will come to you!
He who stays home when the fight begins
And lets another fight for his cause
Should take care:
He who does not take part
In the battle will share in the defeat.
Even avoiding battle will not avoid Battle,
since not to fight for your own cause really means
Fighting in behalf of your enemy's cause.
– Bertolt Brecht (1898 – 1956)
Wonder if he's already begun work on "A People's History of Hell"
What a sad lot you all are. There are very, very few people who gave as much time and energy into fighting for as many selfless projects as this guy.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys, greychampion, Big Tweeting, BigJournalism, IsaacCervantes and others. IsaacCervantes said: RT @BigJournalism: Overnight Open Thread: Howard Zinn, Author of the ‘People’s History’ of the U.S., Dies at 87 http://bit.ly/b4YSX5 [...]
I think John Stewart Mill said it best and I wholly agree with is sentiment:
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. "
One less vote for obama.
I believe all of you people suffer from psychosis and poison of the mind. There really is no hope for this country or this world if this is the collective mindset of the right. It is one thing to disagree but like I said this looks more like psychosis, which is the result of the newspeak that goes on on the conservative networks. You people read like you're one propagandist message away from turning into a white nationalist, and thats scary.
Zinn was nothing more than a unrepentant communist who revised history for the benefit of a like-minded audience. He tailored, manipulated, and perverted the past to sell books to (mostly) leftwing academic intelligentsia and Hollywood effetes.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I agree, espeiclly when the flag is Chinese, North Korean, and the old Hammer and Sickle…or is that not shame enough?
"War religion"….like the Islamic religious war declared on the West.
I'm no chickenhawk, sweetpea. I'm a retired Army SFC and Iraq War vet.
Get over yourself, effete.
I'm sure readers of this blog would agree with more than a few of Zinn's sentiments if they ever bothered to actually read any of his work.
"One of the advantages of a different kind of history, of students learning the history of working people and of rebels and dissenters and black slaves and Native Americans who are protesting their situation, is it is encouraging to young people. It creates citizens instead of subjects. It’s strange that here we are in the United States, we consider ourselves a democracy. But in a democracy, you don’t simply pay homage to the president. In a democracy, citizens gather and they organize. And they make history."
Is this really any different from what people like the Tea Party organizers are striving to achieve? I don't agree with their politics, but the act of grassroots activism and action is very much a sentiment that Zinn would have probably respected.
Well, I am one of those people who actually read his book, and I stand by my comment that much of work is sheer, misleading rubbish. If I remember correctly, there is a movement to further expand use of "Peoples History" into classrooms throughout the country! This is absolutely insane! If I had young children, I would not tolerate having my kids read this material in school. He was not so much into objectively reporting historical events as he was engaging in political and ideological advocacy and selectively taking only those accounts that were useful to his goals of indoctrination and activism. He wrote this book precisely because he wanted to use it to influence and shape public opinion, but he was to American history as Michael Mann and Phil Jones are to "global warming" and "climategate."
I would only recommend "Peoples history" only to those who are intelligent and informed, but we all know that his intended audience went far beyond that. As a result, I consider Zinn to be nothing more than a menace and a national disgrace!
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