Zinn is in

I'm taking the opportunity of summer break to knock out a few books that have been on my shelf for some time now. The trouble with being a student is there is precious little time to read books or articles of your own choosing, so I really look forward to breaks to explore subjects that interest me personally but are hard to work into a regular college course.



Trouble is I get scatter-brained when it is time to pick sources on my own. I have Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: A history of CIA on audio but without having to commute there are few opportunities to listen to it. But two books by Howard Zinn, professor emeritus at Boston University, have really caught my attention. The first is a pioneering work called A People's History of the United States that examines the overlooked majority throughout American history. The second is Passionate Declarations, a collection of essays on war and justice, the sort of philosophical discussion of personal beliefs that one can pen after a lifetime of building a portfolio of serious scholarly writings.



Professor Zinn breaks all the rules that I was taught about historical methods. He eschews the pretense of objectivity that professional historians are taught to strive for, however he is honest and forthright about having an agenda. I can only speak for historians in that research and interpretation is a balancing act, good writing has a definite argument but also a balance. The commentators to watch out for are the ones who pretend to objectivity when they actually are pushing an agenda. Zinn is one of the few members of the intelligensia who tells it like it is, that the rich and powerful have been waging war on working people throughout history, war is neither human nature nor sought out by the working class, and those same workers deserve the fruits of their labor.

Hopefully someday the wingnuts who've been brainwashed over all these years will one by one realize what a raw deal they have been getting by fighting on behalf of the rich by parroting their elite taskmasters, and for no benefit whatsoever. Then, perhaps, they could pick up A People's History of the United States and not squeal right away that it's "so Liberal", rejecting all the common sense the book contains because it doesn't say America is perfect and our leaders love us, etc.

Yeah, and some day all the corporate pirates who caused the current collapse will pay for their crimes instead of getting more welfare to bail them out.