Howard Zinn and the Book That Poisoned a Generation
One book and one author have altered how American history is taught. America is no longer the hero but the cause of everyone’s problems. Who is the author? What is the book? And why has it end up being so popular?
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Script:
The author of the most influential and popular history book of the last quarter-century was an extreme, leftist professor who despised his topic.
The writer’s name is Howard Zinn.
And his subject is America.
Zinn died in 2010, however his poisonous theme lives on: America is and has constantly been a cesspool of bigotry, imperialism, and capitalist exploitation.
You may never have actually become aware of Zinn, but I ensure you a history instructor at your regional high school or college has. And most likely teaches his text or concepts.
The book Zinn composed is entitled A People’s History of the United States.
Regard America with contempt– you do not have to look much even more than Zinn if you’re trying to understand why so numerous young individuals lack patriotism– or even worse.
Columbus was evil?
Lincoln wasn’t actually thinking about releasing the slaves?
The Allies weren’t any much better than the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II?
The Vietnam War was not about stopping the spread of communism, however about promoting American imperialism?.
Zinn.
How do you take an essentially decent country and turn it into the source of much of the world’s evil?
You simply need to lie, misshape, and falsify.
Zinn did all three.
A enthusiastic and life-long leftist, whatever he ever said or composed was in service of the Marxist dogma that life is a class battle. Distilled to its essence this merely indicates that those who have power are bad and those who don’t are good.
The downtrodden working class, the proletariat, are a heroic, however faceless mass. The bad guys– the capitalist gentility– in contrast all have names and deals with. They are the heroes of the nation– Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy, and others.
Zinn, as any Marxist true follower would, saw his job to tear down the latter and promote the former.
But is such a simplistic technique truly history? Noted liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger didn’t think so. Zinn, Schlesinger composed, was “a polemicist, not a historian.”.
As a polemicist, a propagandist, nevertheless, Zinn had couple of peers.
Columbus ended up being a perfect target. Before Zinn, Columbus was widely extolled for his insight and bravery. Now, thanks to Zinn, he’s thought about a genocidal maniac.
Zinn takes the explorer’s ship logs and twists them to state the opposite of what Columbus plainly intended. In Zinn’s unethical rendering, Columbus had contempt for the locals and wished to enslave them.
Check out the explorer’s observations in context and in full, and their true significance emerges. Columbus had deep regard for the Taino (Zinn calls them the Arawaks) and firmly insisted that his guys treat them well. The Caribs not just enslaved the Taino (immediately and decisively refuting the concept that Europeans presented slavery to the New World) however consumed them.
Much outstanding scholarship on Columbus had already been done before Zinn turned the explorer into wicked incarnate. Not surprisingly, the photo painted by respected historians like Samuel Eliot Morison was complex. Columbus was not faultless, however neither was the world he discovered a new Eden.
If you’re preoccupied with propaganda rather than truth, what does it matter? It didn’t for Zinn. His monsters alter, however never their motive: more power for the capitalist judgment elite.
No place is this view more clearly revealed than in his discourse, the longest area of the book, on the Vietnam War.
In Zinn’s view, it was just this simple: mighty, imperialist America bad; the North Vietnamese, the brave peasants, good. That the Communist North Vietnamese slaughtered and tortured 10s of countless South Vietnamese is not allowed to upset the equation.
For the total script as well as FACTS & SOURCES, go to https://www.prageru.com/video/howard-zinn-and-the-book-that-poisoned-a-generation.
source
Zinn, Schlesinger wrote, was “a polemicist, not a historian.”.
Before Zinn, Columbus was extensively proclaimed for his foresight and bravery. Now, thanks to Zinn, he’s thought about a genocidal maniac.
Columbus had deep respect for the Taino (Zinn calls them the Arawaks) and insisted that his males treat them well. Much exceptional scholarship on Columbus had actually already been done before Zinn turned the explorer into wicked incarnate.
