[Peace-discuss] Howard Zinn speaks...

[John W.]

...and we mere mortals tremble.



At 08:31 PM 2/14/2008, Morton K. Brussel wrote:

> From 
> ZNet: 
> <http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16498#Comments>http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16498#Comments
>
>Zinn sounds a little less buoyant than usual.
>
>
Our culture demands, in its very language, that we accept a commonality 
>of interest binding all of us to one another. We mustn’t talk about 
>classes. Only Marxists do that, although James Madison, “Father of the 
>Constitution,” said, thirty years before Marx was born that there was an 
>inevitable conflict in society between those who had property and those 
>who did not.
>
>Our present leaders are not so candid. They bombard us with phrases like 
>“national interest,” “national security,” and “national defense” as if all 
>of these concepts applied equally to all of us, colored or white, rich or 
>poor, as if General Motors and Halliburton have the same interests as the 
>rest of us, as if George Bush has the same interest as the young man or 
>woman he sends to war.
>
>Surely, in the history of lies told to the population, this is the biggest 
>lie. In the history of secrets, withheld from the American people, this is 
>the biggest secret: that there are classes with different interests in 
>this country. To ignore that—not to know that the history of our country 
>is a history of slaveowner against slave, landlord against tenant, 
>corporation against worker, rich against poor—is to render us helpless 
>before all the lesser lies told to us by people in power. 

>
>--mkb
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