Former Boston University professor Howard Zinn, famous for authoring "A People's History of the United States," died of a heart attack yesterday in Santa Monica, California. Zinn, of course, was one of the "intellectual morons" discussed in my book of the same title. Zinn wrote about America with a critical eye. I used the same approach to write about Zinn.
If you remove the editorial comments, "A People's History" is a monumental achievement because it does indeed chronicle indisputable facts in a detached manner (with subsequent Zinn commentary) that would otherwise have gone unreported. One should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, particularly if one hasn't read the entire book.
To the Zinn critics: when you read Zinn, are you critiquing Zinn's work with the same standard of objectivity for which you attack Zinn?
Zinn's view of American history can be summed quickly and accurately as follows:
Whites and/or colonials bad - People of color and/or natives good.
America = imperialism = lust for money.
Knock it off asdf.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
It strikes me that Zinn did not invent the leftist notion that an imbalance of the oppressed and the oppressor in the pursuit of profit is unique to the United States, but many have used it.
The last time a subplot of this type has been used is in the recent movie Avatar. James Cameron has made billions on a plot based on the tried and true leftist model of the nasty old imperial military men working for profit by acting as the muscle for those evil big corporations so they can subjugate the population and rape the natural resources of a planet inhabited by docile blue catlike humanoid type creatures who were the model of the peaceful native until the mercenaries showed up.
I think this type of demonstration helps to re-enforce the guilt that many people feel these days as taught by our school systems and to make them feel better when the tables are turned on the imperialists and the native cultures win. Which, in real history, they never have. It's all part and parcel of how leftists work to soften us up. If one is that gullible.
Why is Obama and his justice department going to get involved in how the BCS sets up the National Championship? Nothing else to do? Just asking.
