I marked the passing of a great fictional icon on January 27th, 2010. J.D. Salinger was a man who defined his generation and his culture with the
alienation of Holden Caulfield. Mr Salingers eccentricities which folldowed his fame are no less of note, and I sympathize with his notions that other people reading what you write is a violation of privacy. But it is not the fictional writing of Salinger that is the main subject of this article.
The other man who died on January 27th, 2010, Howard Zinn, made a life of fiction into a cause celebre. His mission, to redefine the history of the United States.
In 1992, I worked on the fishing and crab boats of Alaska for two years. On several of those vessels, I met a group of Polish fishermen. They had jumped into waters that would kill a normal man in moments, a mile from Dutch Harbor, and swam their way to freedom and a life in America. They would talk a lot about life behind the Iron Curtain. One of the things I learned was a phrase common under Soviet control. “The future is known, the past keeps changing.”
Whether it is rewriting the history of Scott Brown “41” (oh, Massachussetts did it not because Scott Brown was going to STOP Health Care, but because they wanted MORE of it), rewriting who tried stopping the Civil Rights Act (Democrats), or the origins of our nation, the Left is constantly engaged in a rewriting of American life. Just the way abortion becomes reproductive rights, violating the Constitution becomes Gun Control, Global Warming becomes Climate Change, and all the rest, the Left believes if you can just use different words, you can change reality.
Zinn starts his diatribe in 1492. The New World, once a paradisal playground instinct with benevolence and creativity when Columbus met the gentle Arawaks, is ruined when rapacious, war-mongering white men overran the continent. Unfortunately, is make believe.
Do you know how Columbus’ ships first knew they were near land when they arrived in the New World? They spotted smoke. Smoke from the fires the natives would set to raze the land and drive the game. Those constant fires are one reason why we have the great plains today, absent of trees. The destruction of fauna and habitat was greater than anything we have seen since.
Don’t believe me? Look it up.
Early Native Americans were responsible for the extinction of the Pleistocene era mammals. Giant sloths, long horned bison, mammoths and sabre toothed cats, native horses and camels galloped across the North American plains until the early hunters wiped the species away. And religious appreciation for the animals did not ever translate into a need to preserve anything. The Bison died because of the Indians adaptation to the horse in hunting and environmental changes.
Don’t believe me? Look it up.
The Africans who originally arrived with the 16th century colonists were not slaves, but indentured servants who eventually earned their way out of their obligations. And most of them came from West Central Africa and what is today Nigeria, where they came out of a life of true slavery. They were usually the prize of war between one tribe and another. That’s what happened when you lost a battle in Western Africa. You became a slave of the other tribe.
Don’t believe me? Look it up.
The United States did not back Batista in 1959. And Tet was a resounding rejection of North Vietnam.
Don’t believe me? Look it up.
Hatred of not just humanity but America is the tone of Zinn’s book. We are a pestilence upon a tranquil world. His tome is anti-civilization.
Now, I have read Ishmael and largely, I agree with it. If you haven’t read Ishmael, I recommend it.
Through Ishmael, the author Quinn offers a wide-ranging if highly general examination of the history of our civilization, illuminating the assumptions and philosophies at the heart of many global problems. Despite some gross oversimplifications, Quinn’s ideas are fairly convincing; it’s hard not to agree that unrestrained population growth and an obsession with conquest and control of the environment are among the key issues of our times. Quinn also traces these problems back to the agricultural revolution and offers a provocative rereading of the biblical stories of Genesis.
But just because you might agree with that point of view doesn’t mean you’re justified in re-writing history. Zinn does just that. It will take generations to undo the damage his fictionalizing of history has wrought upon the college educated. Those who come out with such distortions of the world and the reality they live in are intent on spreading that discordant message.
Freedom and truth must be told and retold everyday. Believe it.
Writers addendum: I don’t normally feed the Lefts penchant for derogation. Just talking about our history with the Native Americans is touchy enough. But notice that simply pointing out the mischaracterizations of historical retelling is enough to rile up the America Sucks! crowd. You can’t acknowledge that things were done that were wrong, and keep it in context. No. Our history is genocide. Note the philisophical satisfaction in the commentary.
To address this issue properly we must begin with the most important reason for the Indians’ catastrophic decline—namely, the spread of highly contagious diseases to which they had no immunity. This phenomenon is known by scholars as a “virgin-soil epidemic”; in North America, it was the norm. The most hideous enemy of native Americans was not the white man and his weaponry, concludes Alfred Crosby, “but the invisible killers which those men brought in their blood and breath.” It is thought that between 75 to 90 percent of all Indian deaths resulted from these killers.
Of course, you can start sounding like Ward Churchill and argue that it was all by intent. You can inflate numbers of native americans on the continent in 1492, which cannot be known, you can do all sorts of things. The harsh treatment that took place was heinous, but in that regard the history of the United States is not uniqie.
Ignorance about the rest of world history is no excuse.
Sounds like you’re trying to justify genocide in the Americas. Don’t believe me? Look it up!
Boy, a book with another perspective on U.S. history, CALL THE THOUGHT POLICE!
Hmmm, what are you so afraid of Terry?
Why are consevatives so AFRAID of information?
Is it that some school kids might read about our history and actually THINK and JUDGE for themselves, rather than just regurgitate what’s in the “approved” textbooks?
I guess that is scary;
“Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.” Howard Zinn
Terry says;”Freedom and truth must be told and retold everyday. Believe it.”
That’s EXACTLY what Howard Zinn did and sometimes the TRUTH IS UGLY, but it doesn’t make it any less VALID.
For those who are unfamiliar with Howard Zinn’s work here’s a short excerpt from Amy Goodman;
Howard Zinn: The People’s Historian
by Amy Goodman
Howard Zinn, legendary historian, author and activist, died last week at the age of 87. His most famous book is “A People’s History of the United States.” Zinn told me last May, “The idea of ‘A People’s History’ is to go beyond what people have learned in school … history through the eyes of the presidents and the generals in the battles fought in the Civil War, [to] the voices of ordinary people, of rebels, of dissidents, of women, of black people, of Asian-Americans, of immigrants, of socialists and anarchists and troublemakers of all kinds.
#1
To address this issue properly we must begin with the most important reason for the Indians’ catastrophic decline—namely, the spread of highly contagious diseases to which they had no immunity. This phenomenon is known by scholars as a “virgin-soil epidemic”; in North America, it was the norm. The most hideous enemy of native Americans was not the white man and his weaponry, concludes Alfred Crosby, “but the invisible killers which those men brought in their blood and breath.” It is thought that between 75 to 90 percent of all Indian deaths resulted from these killers.
Of course, you can start sounding like Ward Churchill and argue that it was all by intent. You can inflate numbers of native americans on the continent in 1492, which cannot be known, you can do all sorts of things. The harsh treatment that took place was heinous, but in that regard the history of the United States is not uniqie.
Ignorance about the rest of world history is no excuse.
#2, Obviously, a book with “just another perspective” on US History is one thing. A book that Leftists have made the number 1 proscribed book in college for US History is another.
I simply ascribe to bringing a little daylight to the nightstalkers.
Notice anonster screaming as the UV rays strike.
I think you mean “prescribed.” “Proscribed” is what you would prefer to do with it.
But “A People’s History” is not the #1 prescribed book in history on any campus I know of. I always thought of it as a useful and sometimes inspiring little appendix filling in the gaps with stories most accepted histories of the time left out. Sometimes exaggerated and tendentious, but still a necessary balance and palliative.
LOL. Prescribed. Yeah, I would prefer to proscribe it.
Crowley perspective on US History = We are the greatest thing since sliced bread and it’s a worthless enterprise to address our mistakes. Let’s just talk about our greatness.
Realistic historians perspective = We are a great country and have done some great things in this world but we’re not perfect and it’s worthwhile to talk about our shortcomings so that we can learn from history and not repeat those mistakes.
Each person can decide for themselves which perspective can help build a stronger country.
#4 Terry,
“Obviously, a book with “just another perspective” on US History is one thing. A book that Leftists have made the number 1 proscribed book in college for US History is another.”
The reason colleges use Howard Zinn’s book is that most U.S. history textbooks tell the same tale (see below) and that’s ALL MOST U.S. SCHOOL KIDS KNOW, so when kids get to college their professors want them to think and see history in a NEW and different way, SHOCKING isn’t it.
*********What most of us were taught about Cristopher Columbus;
Christopher Columbus: Explorer
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) was an Italian explorer who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, hoping to find a route to India (in order to trade for spices). He made a total of four trips to the Caribbean and South America during the years 1492-1504.
The First Trip:
Columbus sailed for King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella of Spain. On his first trip, Columbus led an expedition with three ships, the Niña (captained by Vicente Yáñez Pinzon), the Pinta (owned and captained by Martin Alonzo Pinzon), and the Santa Maria (captained by Columbus), and about 90 crew members. They set sail on Aug. 3, 1492 from Palos, Spain, and on October 11, 1492, spotted the Caribbean islands off southeastern North America. They landed on an island they called Guanahani, but Columbus later renamed it San Salvador. They were met by the local Taino Indians, many of whom were captured by Columbus’ men and later sold into slavery. Columbus thought he had made it to Asia, and called this area the Indies, and called its inhabitants Indians.
While exploring the islands in the area and looking for gold to loot, Columbus’ men traveled to the islands of Hispaniola (now divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Cuba, and many other smaller islands. On the return trip, the Santa Maria was wrecked and the captain of the Pinta sailed off on his own to try to beat Columbus back. Columbus returned to Spain in the Nina, arriving on March 15, 1493.
In 1492, Columbus sailed from Spain with three ships. Two of the ships, the Niña and the Pinta were small caravels. The third ship, the Santa Maria, was a larger type of ship, a carrack, and was captained by Columbus. The ships were from 15 to 36 meters long.
The Second Trip:
On a second, larger expedition (Sept. 25, 1493-June 11, 1496), sailed with 17 ships and 1,200 to 1,500 men to find gold and capture Indians as slaves in the Indies. Columbus established a base in Hispaniola and sailed around Hispaniola and along the length of southern Cuba. He spotted and named the island of Dominica on November 3, 1493.
The Third Trip:
On a third expedition (May 30, 1498-October 1500), Columbus sailed farther south, to Trinidad and Venezuela (including the mouth of the Orinoco River). Columbus was the first European since the Viking Leif Ericsson to set foot on the mainland of America.
Captain Christopher Columbus’ ensign (banner) pictured a cross and the crown-topped initials F (for King Ferdinand of Spain) and Y (for Queen Isabella of Spain).The Fourth Trip:
On his fourth and last expedition (May 9, 1502-Nov. 7, 1504), Columbus sailed to Mexico, Honduras and Panama (in Central America) and Santiago (Jamaica). Columbus is buried in eastern Hispaniola (now called the Dominican Republic)
********HERE IS HOWARD ZINN’S TAKE;
( AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PUT YOUR FINGERS IN YOUR EARS KIDS AND CLOSE YOUR EYES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress
excerpted from a
People’s History of the United States
by Howard Zinn
Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island’s beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:
“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned…. They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane…. They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus.
Columbus wrote:
“As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.”
The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold?
****
The Indians, Columbus reported, “are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone….” He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage “as much gold as they need . . . and as many slaves as they ask.” He was full of religious talk: “Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities.”
Because of Columbus’s exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans’ intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.
Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were “naked as the day they were born,” they showed “no more embarrassment than animals.” Columbus later wrote: “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.”
But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.
Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.
When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.
The chief source-and, on many matters the only source-of in formation about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolome de las Casas, who, as a young priest, participated in the conquest of Cuba. For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty.
*****
In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves, thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks) tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. It is a unique account and deserves to be quoted at length:
“Endless testimonies . . . prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…. But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…. The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians…”
Las Casas tells how the Spaniards “grew more conceited every day” and after a while refused to walk any distance. They “rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry” or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. “In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings.”
Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.” Las Casas tells how “two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys.”
The Indians’ attempts to defend themselves failed. And when they ran off into the hills they were found and killed. So, Las Casas reports. “they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could tun for help.” He describes their work in the mines:
“… mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside….
After each six or eight months’ work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died. While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides . . . they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation…. In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . . . and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile … was depopulated…. My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write….”
When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, “there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it….”
Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. That beginning, when you read Las Casas-even if his figures are exaggerations (were there 3 million Indians to begin with, as he says, or less than a million, as some historians have calculated, or 8 million as others now believe?) is conquest, slavery, death. When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure-there is no bloodshed-and Columbus Day is a celebration.
*****
The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks) the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as “the United States,” subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a “national interest” represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.
“History is the memory of states,” wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those states men’s policies. From his standpoint, the “peace” that Europe had before the French Revolution was “restored” by the diplomacy of a few national leaders.
But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation-a world not restored but disintegrated.
*****
When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians. The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, created the excuse to take Indian land by declaring the area legally a “vacuum.” The Indians, he said, had not “subdued” the land, and therefore had only a “natural” right to it, but not a “civil right.” A “natural right” did not have legal standing.
The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”
*****
The Indian population of 10 million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would ultimately be reduced to less than a million. Huge numbers of Indians would die from diseases introduced by the whites. A Dutch traveler in New Netherland wrote in 1656 that “the Indians . . . affirm, that before the arrival of the Christians, and before the smallpox broke out amongst them, they were ten times as numerous as they now are, and that their population had been melted down by this disease, whereof nine-tenths of them have died.” When the English first settled Martha’s Vineyard in 1642, the Wampanoags there numbered perhaps three thousand. There were no wars on that island, but by 1764, only 313 Indians were left there. Similarly, Block Island Indians numbered perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 in 1662, and by 1774 were reduced to fifty-one.
Behind the English invasion of North America, behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property. It was a morally ambiguous drive; the need for space, for land, was a real human need. But in conditions of scarcity, in a barbarous epoch of history ruled by competition, this human need was transformed into the murder of whole people.
And anon I think it’s fair to say Zinn’s was a third perspective, balancing off Crowley on the extreme negative end.
Sean Wilentz: To a point, he helped correct mainstream popular conceptions of American history that were highly biased. But he ceased writing serious history. He had a very simplified view that everyone who was president was always a stinker and every left-winger was always great. That can’t be true. A lot of people on the left spent their lives apologizing for one of the worst mass-murdering regimes of the 20th century, and Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. You wouldn’t know that from Howard Zinn.
In a nation with too many Crowleys, Zinn was required for telling the rest of the story. And he was also a great and tireless activist.
I majored in history and never once was assigned anything by Howard Zinn. Aside from all that, Zinn publicly was opposed to the Soviet invasions in Eastern Europe and had a democratically socialist outlook. Therefore, the picture chosen to accompany this blithering blog post is non-sensical hyperbole…
The 1936 version of Last of the Mohicans…is a good start:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027869/
You see in the French and Indian War….the British brought Plague ridden blankets to their enemy Indians as gifts…along with firewater!
J.D. Salinger was responsible for “whacking his pod”…..and of course the events of John Hinkley and Mark David Chapman. Salinger then optimized the resource known as:
A small man’s complex…or a Napoleon Complex in the words of James West….Dr. Miguelito Loveless was perfect for Salinger. Zinn? Nah…..we are still not paying our American Indians the cash they deserve for Oil and Mineral Rights we took from them. In addition; we have no qualms about dumping Nuclear Waste anywhere those Native Americans seem to be!
Where Jody Foster fits into all this mess…is beyond us!
Let’s not kid ourselves;
From Socyberty
“Defenders of Columbus argue that a large amount of the victims were killed by disease however they fail to recognize that most of these diseases were caused by poor living conditions in forced labour camps. Deprived of their crops and fields, many fell prey to dysentery and typhus, were worked to death or were left to starve to death.”
So, is your point that genocide and slavery did not really happen, or that it did happen but it wasn’t as wrong because some indigenous people did bad things to others before Europeans arrived?
Writers addendum: I don’t normally feed the Lefts penchant for derogation. Just talking about our history with the Native Americans is touchy enough. But notice that simply pointing out the mischaracterizations of historical retelling is enough to rile up the America Sucks! crowd. You can’t acknowledge that things were done that were wrong, and keep it in context. No. Our history is genocide. Note the philisophical satisfaction in the commentary.
If you want to address problems in Zinn’s work, as many scholars have, then I suggest a more scholarly tone. If you want to do a hit job on a leading figure of the left who has recently died, fine – but don’t then run and hide behind the argument that you are “simply pointing out the mischaracterizations of historical retelling.”
Your post was mean-spirited, particularly in light of this man’s recent death, and your coyness about “simply” wanting to correct some history is disingenuous. THAT is why people find you offensive, not because you disagree with Zinn. Many historians have taken him to task for various parts of his work – this is old news. But they did it without the partisan hackery and smugness in your post (and accompanying picture). So spare me the “I just came for a discussion about history” posture. We all know why you came, and it wasn’t to discuss historiography.
This is all about control, authoritarian creeps like Terry won’t be happy until they control the narrative 100%. The fact that Howard Zinn’s work is unknown to the majority of Americans doesn’t matter to them, authoritarian creeps get very threatened by anyone having a “different” viewpoint.
Terry wrote;
“But just because you might agree with that point of view doesn’t mean you’re justified in re-writing history. Zinn does just that. It will take generations to undo the damage his fictionalizing of history has wrought upon the college educated. Those who come out with such distortions of the world and the reality they live in are intent on spreading that discordant message.”
History isn’t mathmatics, it always has been and always will be subject to interpretation.
WINSTON CHURCHILL:
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
ww #15,
Amen brother (or sister)!
Reasonable addendum Crowley, did it take ww’s masterful demolition at #15 to shame you into it? Problem is, the addendum pretty much negates the original post, so the question arises, should you just delete the whole shebang? But THEN you would run into the problem – would you delete everything you post that turns out to be fallacious and simply mean-spirited? Because then, WHERE WOULD YOU STOP? You would really have no posts left!
And then this final sentence, classic Crowley – portentous but devoid of meaning:
“Ignorance about the rest of world history is no excuse.”
1. Who are you accusing of being ignorant of world history?
2. Who is using ignorance of world history as an “excuse?”
3. An excuse for what???
4. Is knowledge of world history then a good excuse for something?