Politics and Culture

Howard Zinn is undoubtedly a smart guy, but would you want Howard Zinn leading your country? If he did, how long would your country last? Since no nation was born without taking land from somebody else, he'd probably be itching to give it away.

The following article embodies the leftist attitude towards America. Far leftists like Zinn (not you, Mr. and Mrs. moderate Democrat) claim to love America only when they're attacking it like when they say "this isn't what America is supposed to be about; America is greater than that; we shouldn't stoop to their level (suggesting America is better in some way, no?)" whenever they discuss the Guantanamo-interrogation controversy.

Let's look at this essay he wrote.

Follow up:

Published on Monday, July 3, 2006 by the Progressive
Put Away the Flags
by Howard Zinn

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

Ahh, the "don't care" argument. Yes, it's true that if you don't care about your country, you won't fight to enlarge it. If you don't care about race, you won't fight over race. If you don't care about religion, you won't fight for religion. If you don't care about your health, you won't fight over health care, etc. You also won't fight to defend any of those things from people who do care about it.

Second, Zinn isn't asking the right question. Yes, nationalism could engender mass murder-if not balanced by higher moral principles. But, of the many patriotic people in America, how many do you think want to commit mass murder? I love my children, but I don't want to kill other kids. I suppose if I didn't love them, I wouldn't care to root against the team my son plays in soccer, but it wouldn't make me less likely to kill anybody-unless they want to hurt Nelson Jr.

To give another example, I love my friends and the school where I teach. I root for them and want them to do well. To "do well" usually means beating somebody else in something. Again, my moral values- which I get from my religion- would forbid me from cheating or causing harm in order to win. That takes care of that problem as far as I'm concerned.

If I didn't care whether they won, I'd be less likely to help them, I guess. Get it? Love of anything is motivation to help as well.

And, lastly, in Army Engineering school, we have students from many nations studying here and they all love their country. And, I respect them for that- I don't hate them. I would be more inclined to dislike somebody who didn't stand up for their country than one who did.

These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

I don't get it. Is he saying within a country? Why would one use nationalism if he wishes to treat his fellow countrymen poorly? Wouldn't a patriotic person be more willing to help their countrymen?

I suppose nationalists can treat people from other countries poorly. But if one's values includes not hurting the innocent, they're safe.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours -- huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction -- what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Vanity is only acceptable for the ugly.

Now, I'm confused. If you're weak it's OK to like yourself? So, the country-loving impulse isn't bad, in and of itself; it's only bad if you can compete against others and win. Isn't this the perfect example of left thinking? Patriotism, pride, and every other thing they hate is good in people who, logically, should have less of it.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

Yes, we are and yes, we did.

We're an exception in the world in that we're a country defined not by a race, but by common values; A young country with the oldest democracy. We brought liberty, civilization, and democracy (some immediately, some eventually) to:

1. Most of the North American continent including those lands that used to belong to the Mexican dictatorship by way of the Spanish empire (Mexicans come by the millions to come to the United States. If we hadn't expanded into other lands, where would they go?)

2. Cuba from Spain, again.

3. Puerto Rico

4. South Korea

5. Germany

6. Japan

7. Central America from Cuba and the Soviet Union. Costa Rica would eventually have fallen.

8. Haiti

9. Iraq

10. Afghanistan

11. France

And a bunch of others. I think it's safe to say that without the United States and its belief in its moral superiority, most of the world wouldn't be free. I'm proud of that.

That self-deception started early.

When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession." When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."

We're lucky to have Howard Zinn to free us from our errors like the Puritans thought they were doing vis a vis the Indians. Now, if I get Howard Zinn's drift, the United States should never have existed. No Indian lands should have been displaced, right? The world would be better if the Indians roamed the entire North American continent by themselves. Of course, in reality, somebody else would have taken the Indians' land. China? Arabs? Russia? Spanish.

Does he even know what he's saying?

On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence." After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."

I don't like to invoke God to justify political actions, but I think Mexicans who lived in the Southwest at the time were much better off as American citizens than if their land had stayed part of Mexico. Certainly, the Mexicans thought so. Americans were welcomed even in Mexico City. Mexicans in the Southwest fought with the United States against Mexico.

It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.

Not completely. But if they believed the statements you quote them as saying, then they thought so. What makes Howard Zinn right?

We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, "to civilize and Christianize" the Filipino people.

Filipinos were already Christians. Americans helped the Filipinos build roads and schools, fight disease, and, yes, lay the foundation for a future democracy.

As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness."

Zinn is lying. Disease caused almost all of those deaths. Many Filipinos helped us against the insurgency.

We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.

Americans have killed thousands of Iraqi civilians? Why would they do that? Just to be mean? Is he counting murderous terrorists?

Yet they are victims, too, of our government's lies.

How many times have we heard President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for "liberty," for "democracy"?

Not American liberty directly, no. But long-range, strategic thinking is beyond, Zinn, I suppose. We do help Iraqi democracy, right?

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This is complicated. I suppose we could have not responded to Pearl Harbor (and I know Roosevelt, for whom Zinn would vote, encouraged the attack in many ways) but fighting somebody that attacks you is OK, I think If Zinn doesn't think so, then it doesn't speak well for him.

Does Zinn think we just went over and killed them because we felt like it? It was a war. Had they not fought us, they wouldn't be dead.

By the way, when a husband beats his wife, does Zinn think that the wife should find out what she did to deserve it or that she should fight back in some way?

And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail last year that God speaks through him.

Liar

We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

OK. This is where Zinn shows himself an idiot. Let's look at some past empires. Tell me which one is most like the United States:

1. Nazi Germany: Jew killing machine, enslaver of conquered, not democracy-spreading. Nope
2. Soviet Union: Same as above. Substitute Jews for capitalists and resisters and add economic totalitarianism.
3. Rome: Enslaver. Nope.
4. Great Britain: Not too different. All of its former colonies are democracies except Hong Kong. They didn't incorporate conquered into its own country and extend to them the right to vote like we did.
5. Huns: Goodness no.
6. Egypt: Oh, why go on. Does he really believe this?

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

I do feel a kinship with people because everybody has a God-given soul, but I don't think that's what he means. The fact of the matter is that the larger the group, the less one has in common with everybody else just like the larger the political party, the more differences in opinion amongst its members. I just don't share values with many in the world. Since we'd be at odds, I don't see how we can get together.

Johnny Cash responds to Howard Zinn.

Howard Zinn, a World War II bombardier, is the author of the best-selling "A People's History of the United States" (Perennial Classics, 2003, latest edition). Email to: pmproj@progressive.org

People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) by Howard Zinn

The Communist Manifesto (Signet Classics) by Martin Malia

Social aspects of the treatment of the insane / by Jacob A. Goldberg. by Michigan Historical Reprint Series