Howard Zinn

 

 

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Friday

April 29, 2011

 

Howard Zinn:

Why

Did He Write

“A People’s History”?

 

There is a mutually exclusive relation between freedom and privilege. As one of these comes into the world, the other goes out of it.

Howard Zinn might have written A People’s History of the United States in order to pursue justice, or altruism, or just a corrected version of history. But there is evidence of omissions and distortions in the book (see the article on Zinn on the site Discover the Networks) that lead us to question his motives.

So, another possible motive for Zinn (and for Chomsky) is the obtaining of privilege for himself and for his social class, the intellectual elite. That is, Zinn liked to say, “See what happens when the market is free?” He meant to say that the sins of America took place in a decentralized America, in a free-market America. But, the thinking goes, if only we will agree to socialism, to a planned economy and to a planned society, the ancient ills would be surpassed, and a juster society by far would be realized.

But it should be pointed out that the basis of individual freedom is economic freedom, economic opportunity. If economic freedom is undermined, so is the basis of personal liberty. But that precisely is what a planned economy does: It undermines economic freedom by eliminating entrepreneurship. So, freedom is exiting the world in this system of an economy planned against competition.

As freedom exits the world, though, privilege enters. This is the only opportunity that really exists in a planned society. So a possible motive for arguing that America is sinful is to argue indirectly for a planned economy, and thereby position oneself to obtain the privileges in that new society that will open up.

 

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poem

   
 

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tuesdaY’s

april 26, 2011

poeM

   
 

   
 

the shadows of my life

grow longer, stretching

further across the land

inexorably, and the spring

wildflowers bloom and die on

the hills, sprinkling the green

briefly with yellow and white.

   
 

   
 

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Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky

   
 

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Tuesday

April 26, 2011

   
 

Howard Zinn

And

Noam Chomsky

   
 

For centuries, even millennia, the human race suffered in hierarchical, stratified, suffocating, and administrative big-government states that offered little space for personal freedom. But with the emergence of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Judeo-Christian tradition, and additionally with the rise of commerce in northern Italy during the Renaissance, there was a new emphasis on, a breathing space given to, individual liberty and the preferences of the individual. We were allowed to pursue happiness, and we were relatively free of overarching government: The individual was no longer subordinated to the state apparatus. The American Revolution is the jewel in the crown of this historical tendency.

But in the middle of the nineteenth century, people such as Karl Marx came to the fore with great influence, and attempted a reactionary countermovement back to the suffocating style of government that would have as many industries as possible nationalized. The chief idea of this style of governance is collectivization, the gathering of power into a centralized bureaucracy in the capital city.

Now, it used to be that this nationalization of industry was the hallmark activity of this type of state, but since that type of thing has been thoroughly discredited by its inability to produce anything other than empty shelves, the new hallmark activity of this manner of state is the creation and expansion of the welfare state.

But the problem here is that this means the redistribution of wealth from those who earned it to those who purposely did nothing. This then is the attrition of economic freedom, and it just so happens that economic freedom is the basis of personal freedom. The welfare state is an attack on economic freedom and on personal freedom and is therefore an attack on the basis of Western Civilization.

Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky are jive talking, pretending to be the truth when in reality they are part of the propaganda stream of the old Soviet Union, a stream that started in the 1930′s. They are all about saying, “See? Do you see what happens when the market is free? Do you see the injustice that results? Do you imagine that anything other than government can address the injustice?” This is all just a way of getting through an agenda of centralized control over society.

   
 

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