Zinn's People's History of the US

[Rushmore]

I have read this book several times through, and have even given it as a Xmas gift. It is a wonderful perspective, albeit slanted.

I enjoyed it, even though it comes noplace close to representing my worldview in any way.

Extra credit question: Name the popular film in which this book is mentioned.

[craig r]

zinn discusses in a lot of his writings himself being a WWII pilot. he talks about going to towns that he bombed and how they are still in bad shape.

craig

[craig r]

good will hunting...ooooh i am the nutzzzzzzzzz [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[GWB]

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I hold no illusions about the nature of, say, our westward expansion (my mind flirts with the word "genocide").

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It is unfortunate that the view of the relationship with American Indians has gone so far to the left. For the people on both sides who lived through this period of time, their primary motive was self-preservation.

What people now call genocide is often just a series of episodes that occured because an ongoing undeclared war was going on. If someone attacks your town, your efforts to retaliate and prevent future occurances is not an act of Genocide.

[Rushmore]

You win instant Moderately-Decent-Mainstream-Movie-Knowledge-Credibility.

That's probably a little disappointing.

Get used to it, boy.

[andyfox]

There's no such thing as purely objective history, to be sure. What Zinn has done is to look at our history from another angle. The more traditional triumphalist version is "common knowledge." Much of that "common knowledge" is either simply untrue or incomplete in its outlook.

Let's consider the Columbus example. I was taught that the Queen pawned her jewels to finance him. That all people believed the earth was flat and that he'd therefore fall of the edge. That the New World was sparsely populated by ignorant savages (that very word used in the textbooks I read).

All of that is factually false.

In addition, nothing was mentioned of Columbus's strangeness (his hearing of voices, his belief that he was god's agent); his poor administrative skills (he was taken back to Spain in chains because of this); his initiation of Indian slavery as a means of enriching himself; the resultant depopulation of the Indies; nor his lust for gold that determined almost everything about where he sailed and what he did when he got there.

To leave these things out is to have an incomplete view of his accomplishment and what it meant for the world.

[craig r]

who was attacking whos town?

[andyfox]

It is unfortunate for our country that you are as ignorant of history as you are of current events.

Pushing the Indians off their land was not an act of self-preservation. Burning the Pequots was not an act of self-preservation. Putting the California Indians into missions was not an act of self-preservation. Throwing the Acoma off the top of their mesa was not an act of self-preservation. Such "episodes" were reapeated over and over again because the Indians had what the Europeans wanted: land.

[GWB]

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who was attacking whos town?

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Both sides were attacking each others towns. That was my point, cultures were clashing, as opposed to one culture systematically engaging in genocide as the politically correct histories would have you believe.

[elwoodblues]

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Both sides were attacking each others towns.

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I guess that's the real issue. One side seems to think the towns belonged to the white folk, the other side thinks they belonged to the people the white folk kicked out.