It occurs to me that Zinn’s signature “accomplishment” is telling the Soviet version of the American story–the story which ostensibly justified all their violence, tyranny and cruelty–AS an American, and an American veteran at that.
Since he deals only with the history of America, ostensibly, he is under no pressure to tell the truth about Communism, or all the cruelties it inflicted.
It can be argued that his book has facilitated more deception and leftist regression than any other single book written in the last 50 years. I read that it is often the only book on American history even many college students read, and as more or less intentional agit-prop, it no doubt has made Leftist recruiting much easier.
I will submit that a much better book for anyone wanting to learn American history from someone who self identifies as a historian first and foremost (and not propagandist) would be Paul Johnson’s excellent “History of the American People.” All of Johnson’s books are good. “Intellectuals” is another one I think all people aspiring to a life of the mind should read, as warning.
Those two books really started my journey into being a conservative. Some more good ones are Thomas Sowell’s “Basic Economics”, Friedrich Hayek’s “The Fatal Conceit”, and “Economics in One lesson”, by Henry Hazlitt.
What I want to underscore is that the conservative arguments cannot, in my view, be refuted on their merits. I have exposed all these ideas to continual criticism for many years, including my own.
If you are a decent person, and want decent lives for the people around you, you MUST subscribe to some form of conservatism. That is my honest view.
We have lost the messaging war precisely because we want to be nice. We want to give people equal time. But those people DO NOT want to us equal time for a very simple reason: looked at systematically, both in principle and their history of implementation, NOTHING the sorts of people running the Democrat Party today want can be justified. The only ideas they hold worth holding are in general held by Republicans too.
If you want to help women or minorities, vote Republican. If you want to help the environment, vote Republican. If you want peace, join those of us calling for an end to foreign involvements, understand that current Democrats are no friends of peace either, and vote for some Republicans. Vote John McCain and his ilk out.
We have allowed the shrill voices of the mentally unhinged to pervert and corrupt our national dialogue for too long. We have many problems facing us, but we also have many untapped solutions, but ONLY if we return to the objective use of reason, to a firm commitment in ALL cases to the protection of human decency, to a foundational respect for ALL human beings.
Since he deals only with the history of America, ostensibly, he is under no pressure to tell the truth about Communism, or all the cruelties it inflicted.
It can be argued that his book has facilitated more deception and leftist regression than any other single book written in the last 50 years. I read that it is often the only book on American history even many college students read, and as more or less intentional agit-prop, it no doubt has made Leftist recruiting much easier.
I will submit that a much better book for anyone wanting to learn American history from someone who self identifies as a historian first and foremost (and not propagandist) would be Paul Johnson’s excellent “History of the American People.” All of Johnson’s books are good. “Intellectuals” is another one I think all people aspiring to a life of the mind should read, as warning.
Those two books really started my journey into being a conservative. Some more good ones are Thomas Sowell’s “Basic Economics”, Friedrich Hayek’s “The Fatal Conceit”, and “Economics in One lesson”, by Henry Hazlitt.
What I want to underscore is that the conservative arguments cannot, in my view, be refuted on their merits. I have exposed all these ideas to continual criticism for many years, including my own.
If you are a decent person, and want decent lives for the people around you, you MUST subscribe to some form of conservatism. That is my honest view.
We have lost the messaging war precisely because we want to be nice. We want to give people equal time. But those people DO NOT want to us equal time for a very simple reason: looked at systematically, both in principle and their history of implementation, NOTHING the sorts of people running the Democrat Party today want can be justified. The only ideas they hold worth holding are in general held by Republicans too.
If you want to help women or minorities, vote Republican. If you want to help the environment, vote Republican. If you want peace, join those of us calling for an end to foreign involvements, understand that current Democrats are no friends of peace either, and vote for some Republicans. Vote John McCain and his ilk out.
We have allowed the shrill voices of the mentally unhinged to pervert and corrupt our national dialogue for too long. We have many problems facing us, but we also have many untapped solutions, but ONLY if we return to the objective use of reason, to a firm commitment in ALL cases to the protection of human decency, to a foundational respect for ALL human beings.