One of the books I have recently read is Zinn's
Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice. This is a 2003 paperback revision of a slightly different book published in 1990. Zinn is probably best known for his
A People's History of the United States which takes the reader beyond the great men, presidents, battles, and the like to include the lives and experiences of ordinary Americans, and to offer a very different perspective on our national mythos.
Zinn has his critiques among professional historians. I do not propose to rehearse those issues. He does offer some powerful insights. I thought I would take time to share a few. Obviously those I select are ones that reached me. I would be interested in your reactions.
Read on, and then let me know.
To depend on great thinkers, authorities, and experts is, it seems to me, a violation of the spirit of democracy. Democracy rests on the idea that, except for technical details for which experts may be useful, the important decisions of society are within the capability of ordinary citizens. Not only can ordinary citizens make decisions about these issues, but they ought to, because citizens understand their own interests more clearly than any experts.
-- p. 6
In my years of teaching, I never listened to the advice of people who said that a teacher should be objective, neutral and professional. All the experiences of my life, growing up on the streets of New York, becoming a shipyard worker at the age of eighteen, enlisting in the Air Force in World War II, participating in the civil rights movement in the Deep South, cried out against that.
- p.7
There is a long history in this country of rebellion against the establishment, of resistance to orthodoxy. There has always been a commonsense perception that there are things seriously wrong and that we can't depend on those in charge to set them right.
- also p. 7
How many times have the dreams of young people - the desire to help others; to devote their lives to the sick or the poor; or to poetry, music or drama - been demeaned as foolish romanticism, impractical in a world where one must "make a living"? Indeed, the economic system reinforces the same idea by rewarding those who spend their lives on "practical" pursuits - while making life difficult for the artists, poets, nurses, teachers, and social workers.
Realism is seductive because once you have accept the reasonable notion that you should base your actions on reality, you are too often led to accept, without much questioning, someone else's version of what that reality is. It is a crucial act of independent thinking to be skeptical of someone else's description of reality.
- pp. 10-11
Anyone reading history should understand from the start that there is no such thing as impartial history. All written history is partial in two senses. It is partial in that it is only a tiny part of what really happened. And it is partial in that it inevitably takes sides, by what it includes or omits, what it emphasizes or deemphasizes. It may do this openly or deceptively, consciously or subconsciously.
The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lying. The definition of important, of course, depends on one's values.
- p. 51
There is still another kind of historical bias that can mislead us, and that is the tendency of the culture to emphasize historical trivia, to learn facts for their own sake. The result of this is to encourage a flat, valueless interest in past facts that have no significance in the betterment of the human condition, but that are simply "interesting." The interest served, however, is that of diverting us from the truly important uses of history, thus making history, literally, a diversion.
- p.58
But the Progressive Era was also the period when the greatest numbers of black people, thousands of them, were lynched - hanged, burned, shot by mobs - in the United States.
- also p. 58
What the experience of Athens suggests is that a nation may be relatively liberal at home and yet totally ruthless abroad. Indeed, it may more easily enlist its population in cruelty to others by pointing to the advantages at home. An entire nation is made into mercenaries, being paid with a bit of democracy at home for participating in the destruction of life abroad.
- p. 73
It seems that once an initial judgment has been made that a war is just, there is a tendency to stop thinking, to assume then that everything done on behalf of victory is morally acceptable.
- p. 96
I don't want to deny the benefits of the modern era: the advance of science, the improvements in health, the spread of literacy and art beyond tiny elites, and the value of even an imperfect system over a monarchy. But those advantages lead us to overlook the fact that the modern era, replacing the arbitrary rule of men with the impartial rule of law, has not brought any fundamental change in the facts of unequal wealth and unequal power. What was done before - exploiting the poor, sending the young to war, and putting troublesome people in dungeons - is still done, except that this no longer seems to be the arbitrary action of the feudal lord or king; it now has the authority of neutral, impersonal law.
- p. 111
It seems that the closer we get to matters of life and death - war and peace - the more undemocratic is our so-called democratic system. Once the government , ignoring democratic procedures, gets the nation into war, it creates an atmosphere in which criticism of the war may be punished by imprisonment - as happened ion the Civil War and in both world wars. Thus democracy gets a double defeat in matters of war and peace.
- p. 124
We have a class system, unmistakably, in a country that promises "liberty and justice for all." Where is the justice of a society that has such extremes of luxury for some, misery for others? Or does the middle-class comfort with which most of us live in the United States prevent us from asking that question with genuine indignation?
- p. 148
But dependency on government has never been bad for the rich. The pretense of the laissez-faire people is that only the poor are dependent upon the government, while the rich take care of themselves. This argument manages to ignore all of modern history, which shows a consistent record of laissez-faire for the poor, but enormous government intervention for the rich.
- p. 151
After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment's phrase "life, liberty or property," which was turned out to be useless to protect the liberty of black people, was used in courts to protect the property of corporations. Between 1890 and 1910, of the cases involving the Fourteenth Amendment that came before the Supreme Court, 19 were concerned with the lives and liberties of blacks and 288 dealt with the property rights of corporations.
- 156
It would be an enormous accomplishment to get agreement that the fundamental requirements of existence - food, housing, medical care, education, and work - be distributed according to need. It is shocking, it is irrational, it is unjust, that in a country as wealthy as the United States, any human being living within its borders should not have these basic things.
- pp. 162-163
and one final, slightly longer extract, in the chapter entitled "The Ultimate Power." This has the heading "Uncertain Ends, Unacceptable Means."
To confront the fact of unpredictability leas to two important conclusions:
The first is that the struggle for justice should never be abandoned on the ground that it is hopeless, because of the apparent overwhelming power of those in the world who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to their power. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, and patience - whether by blacks in Alabama and South Africa; peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Vietnam; or workers and intellectuals in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. No cold calculation of the balance of power should deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just.
The second is that in the face of the obvious unpredictability of social phenomena all of history's excuses for war and preparation for war - self-defense, national security, freedom, justice, and stopping aggression - can no longer be accepted. Massive violence, whether in war or internal upheaval, cannot be justified by any end, however noble, because no outcome is sure. Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desirable, are uncertain, and the means are horrible and certain, those means must not be employed.
- p. 279
