Howard Zinn: what's the deal with that guy?

[History_Buff]

Just off the top of my head, but Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt were both Republicans. They did as much, or more, for the "liberal" agenda than any Democrat.

True, but the Republican party of the past is not the Republican party of today. Despite being the same organization on paper, it's supporters and political causes are very different from those of the pre-New Deal era.

 

[Whomp]

I've read excerpts of the book and also realize Howard Zinn said "Objectivity is impossible and it is also undesirable." Zinn (and many educators) want you to read their interpretation of history.

Since I quoted Zinn on objectivity I'll provide it to the thread. As Dachs said, just posting facts on history would be quite boring. My point with that post was to be aware the lens by which Zinn delivers his message.

 

[Japanrocks12]

The idea is that "the people" connotes the working or middle class, or the everyday joe-shmo. It is a perspective shift. Yes, Rockefeller was a person too, but knowing Zinn's perspective and reading the book I think it becomes clear what he means when he says "people's history."

I just feel as if "the everyday joe-shmo" doesn't have his immediate experience, the experience of his ancestors, his friends, his enemies, etc represented by Zinn's book to the same degree that a general American history book would. IIRC, Zinn spends a lot of time describing the experience of blacks in the U.S. military during World War II. This is a crucial civil rights topic, since after World War II, Truman desegregated the military, but what's being left out from an expansion of a normal textbook's coverage of this event to Zinn's coverage of it is an equivalent amount of material about other aspects of U.S. military involvement in World War II. Maybe for joe-shmo, his grandfather fought in a battle or campaign that wouldn't have been mentioned in Zinn's book because Zinn wants to devote more time to history of a bona-fide marginalized group.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I will add a third complaint: Howard Zinn is only known because he is partisan. I wonder how many people would be willing in this thread would be willing to weigh in on comparative academic giants like Russel Weigley.

 

[Japanrocks12]

Anyway, yeah, Zinn definitely has an agenda, but that doesn't diminish the fact that reading his book is worthwhile. Civver was absolutely spot-on in his characterization of the book as a collection of America's dirty little secrets. It's worth reading whenever Americans feel high about the triumph of their nation and lose sight of its shortcomings and capacity for improvement, such as now.

 

[Luckymoose]

I bring up Zinn whenever I want someone to know they are wrong about history.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Foreign policy, that's quit the euphemism for wholesale murder and destruction you have there. I think if Zinn wanted to disregard Roosevelt as a human being because of what he did in the Philippines, I would not have much of a problem. I would have a problem if he attempted to detract from his successes against the trusts, but I think you misrepresent Zinn here.

I am slightly out of my depth here, but I think you are attributing too much to TR.

It is easy enough to track down all the references to Teddy Roosevelt, because Zinn didn't make that many of them:

The Empire and the People.

Spoiler :

Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend in the year 1897: "In strict confidence . . . I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one."

These expansionist military men and politicians were in touch with one another. One of Theodore Roosevelt's biographers tells us: "By 1890, Lodge, Roosevelt, and Mahan had begun exchanging views," and that they tried to get Mahan off sea duty "so that he could continue full-time his propaganda for expansion." Roosevelt once sent Henry Cabot Lodge a copy of a poem by Rudyard Kipling, saying it was "poor poetry, but good sense from the expansionist standpoint."

When the United States did not annex Hawaii in 1893 after some Americans (the combined missionary and pineapple interests of the Dole family) set up their own government, Roosevelt called this hesitancy "a crime against white civilization." And he told the Naval War College: "All the great masterful races have been fighting races. . . . No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumph of war."

Roosevelt was contemptuous of races and nations he considered inferior. When a mob in New Orleans lynched a number of Italian immigrants, Roosevelt thought the United States should offer the Italian government some remuneration, but privately he wrote his sister that he thought the lynching was "rather a good thing" and told her he had said as much at a dinner with "various dago diplomats . . . all wrought up by the lynching."

William James, the philosopher, who became one of the leading anti-imperialists of his time, wrote about Roosevelt that he "gushes over war as the ideal condition of human society, for the manly strenuousness which it involves, and treats peace as a condition of blubberlike and swollen ignobility, fit only for huckstering weaklings, dwelling in gray twilight and heedless of the higher life. . . ."

Roosevelt's talk of expansionism was not just a matter of manliness and heroism; he was conscious of "our trade relations with China." Lodge was aware of the textile interests in Massachusetts that looked to Asian markets. Historian Marilyn Young has written of the work of the American China Development Company to expand American influence in China for commercial reasons, and of State Department instructions to the American emissary in China to "employ all proper methods for the extension of American interests in China." She says (The Rhetoric of Empire) that the talk about markets in China was far greater than the actual amount of dollars involved at the time, but this talk was important in shaping American policy toward Hawaii, the Philippines, and all of Asia.

It seems that the business interests of the nation did not at first want military intervention in Cuba. American merchants did not need colonies or wars of conquest if they could just have free access to markets. This idea of an "open door" became the dominant theme of American foreign policy in the twentieth century. It was a more sophisticated approach to imperialism than the traditional empire-building of Europe. William Appleman Williams, in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, says:

This national argument is usually interpreted as a battle between imperialists led by Roosevelt and Lodge and anti-imperialists led by William Jennings Bryan and Carl Schurz. It is far more accurate and illuminating, however, to view it as a three-cornered fight. The third group was a coalition of businessmen, intellectuals, and politicians who opposed traditional colonialism and advocated instead a policy of an open door through which America's preponderant economic strength would enter and dominate all underdeveloped areas of the world.

Within the next three months, however, the pressure from the United States, the military occupation, the refusal to allow the Cubans to set up their own government until they acquiesced, had its effect; the Convention, after several refusals, adopted the Platt Amendment. General Leonard Wood wrote in 1901 to Theodore Roosevelt: "There is, of course, little or no independence left Cuba under the Platt Amendment."

The Socialist Challenge.

Spoiler :

There was almost a religious fervor to the movement, as in the eloquence of Debs. In 1906, after the imprisonment in Idaho of Bill Haywood and two other officers of the Western Federation of Miners on an apparently faked murder charge, Debs wrote a naming article in the Appeal to Reason:

Murder has been plotted and is about to be executed in the name and under the forms of law. . ..
It is a foul plot; a damnable conspiracy; a hellish outrage. ...

If they attempt to murder Moyer, Haywood and their brothers, a million revolutionists, at least, will meet them with guns. .. .

Capitalist courts never have done, and never will do, anything for the working class. . . .

A special revolutionary convention of the proletariat . .. would be in order, and, if extreme measures are required, a general strike could be ordered and industry paralyzed as a preliminary to a general uprising.

If the plutocrats begin the program, we will end it.

Theodore Roosevelt, after reading this, sent a copy to his Attorney General, W. II. Moody, with a note: "is it possible to proceed against Debs and the proprietor of this paper criminally?"

Mother Jones did not seem especially interested in the feminist movement. She was busy organizing textile workers and miners, and organizing their wives and children. One of her many feats was the organization of a children's march to Washington to demand the end of child labor (as the twentieth century opened, 284,000 children between the ages of ten and fifteen worked in mines, mills, factories). She described this:

In the spring of 1903, I went to Kensington, Pennsylvania, where seventy-five thousand textile workers were on strike. Of this number at least ten thousand were little children. The workers were striking for more pay and shorter hours. Every day little children came into Union Headquarters, some with their hands off, some with the thumb missing, some with their fingers off at the knuckle. They were stooped little things, round shouldered and skinny...
I asked some of the parents if they would let me have their little boys and girls for a week or ten days, promising to bring them back safe and sound. ... A man named Sweeny was marshal.... A few men and women went with me. .. . The children carried knapsacks on their backs in which was a knife and fork, a tin cup and plate.. .. One little fellow had a drum and another had a fife.... We carried banners that said: ... "We want time to play... .

The children marched through New Jersey and New York and down to Oyster Bay to try to see President Theodore Roosevelt, but he refused to see them. "But our march bad done its work. We had drawn the attention of the nation to the crime of child labor."

The government of the United States (between 1901 and 1921, the Presidents were Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson)-whether Republican or Democrat-watched Negroes being lynched, observed murderous riots against blacks in Statesboro, Georgia, Brownsville, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia, and did nothing.

What was clear in this period to blacks, to feminists, to labor organizers and socialists, was that they could not count on the national government. True, this was the "Progressive Period," the start of the Age of Reform; but it was a reluctant reform, aimed at quieting the popular risings, not making fundamental changes.

What gave it the name "Progressive" was that new laws were passed. Under Theodore Roosevelt, there was the Meat Inspection Act, the Hepburn Act to regulate railroads and pipelines, a Pure Food and Drug Act. Under Taff, the Mann-Elkins Act put telephone and telegraph systems under the regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. In Woodrow Wilson's presidency, the Federal Trade Commission was introduced to control the growth of monopolies, and the Federal Reserve Act to regulate the country's money and banking system. Under Taft were proposed the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, allowing a graduated income tax, and the Seventeenth Amendment, providing for the election of Senators directly by popular vote instead of by the state legislatures, as the original Constitution provided. Also at this time, a number of states passed laws regulating wages and hours, providing for safety inspection of factories and compensation for injured workmen.

For instance, Theodore Roosevelt made a reputation for himself as a "trust-buster" (although his successor, Taft, a "conservative," while Roosevelt was a "Progressive," launched more antitrust suits than did Roosevelt). In fact, as Wiebe points out, two of J. P. Morgan's men- Elbert Gary, chairman of U.S. Steel, and George Perkins, who would later become a campaigner for Roosevelt- "arranged a general understanding with Roosevelt by which . . . they would cooperate in any investigation by the Bureau of Corporations in return for a guarantee of their companies' legality." They would do this through private negotiations with the President. "A gentleman's agreement between reasonable people," Wiebe says, with a bit of sarcasm.

In 1909, a manifesto of the new Progressivism appeared-a book called The Promise of American Life by Herbert Croly, editor of the New Republic and an admirer of Theodore Roosevelt. He saw the need for discipline and regulation if the American system were to continue. Government should do more, he said, and he hoped to see the "sincere and enthusiastic imitation of heroes and saints"- by whom he may have meant Theodore Roosevelt.

Richard Hofstadter, in his biting chapter on the man the public saw as the great lover of nature and physical fitness, the war hero, the Boy Scout in the White House, says: "The advisers to whom Roosevelt listened were almost exclusively representatives of industrial and finance capital-men like Hanna, Robert Bacon, and George W. Perkins of the House of Morgan, Elihu Root, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich ... and James Stillman of the Rockefeller interests." Responding to his worried brother-in-law writing from Wall Street, Roosevelt replied: "I intend to be most conservative, but in the interests of the corporations themselves and above all in the interests of the country."

Roosevelt supported the regulatory Hepburn Act because he feared something worse. He wrote to Henry Cabot Lodge that the railroad lobbyists who opposed the bill were wrong: "I think they are very shortsighted not to understand that to beat it means to increase the movement for government ownership of the railroads." His action against the trusts was to induce them to accept government regulation, in order to prevent destruction. He prosecuted the Morgan railroad monopoly in the Northern Securities Case, considering it an antitrust victory, but it hardly changed anything, and, although the Sherman Act provided for criminal penalties, there was no prosecution of the men who had planned the monopoly-Morgan, Harriman, Hill.

Thus, the Federation drew up a model workmen's compensation bill in 1910, and the following year twelve states passed laws for compensation or accident insurance. When the Supreme Court said that year that New York's workmen's compensation law was unconstitutional because it deprived corporations of property without due process of law, Theodore Roosevelt was angry. Such decisions, he said, added "immensely to the strength of the Socialist Party." By 1920, forty-two states had workmen's compensation laws. As Weinstein says: "It represented a growing maturity and sophistication on the part of many large corporation leaders who had come to understand, as Theodore Roosevelt often told them, that social reform was truly conservative."

The Progressive movement, whether led by honest reformers like Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin or disguised conservatives like Roosevelt (who was the Progressive party candidate for President in 1912), seemed to understand it was fending off socialism. The Milwaukee Journal, a Progressive organ, said the conservatives "fight socialism blindly . .. while the Progressives fight it intelligently and seek to remedy the abuses and conditions upon which it thrives."

Frank Munsey, a director of U.S. Steel, writing to Roosevelt, seeing him as the best candidate for 1912, confided in him that the United States must move toward a more "parental guardianship of the people" who needed "the sustaining and guiding hand of the State." It was "the work of the state to think for the people and plan for the people," the steel executive said.

It seems quite clear that much of this intense activity for Progressive reform was intended to head off socialism. Easley talked of "the menace of Socialism as evidenced by its growth in the colleges, churches, newspapers." In 1910, Victor Berger became the first member of the Socialist party elected to Congress; in 1911, seventy-three Socialist mayors were elected, and twelve hundred lesser officials in 340 cities and towns. The press spoke of "The Rising Tide of Socialism."

Does any of this falsely portray Roosevelt and his policies, or the events which occurred at that time in history? I think not.

 

[Dachs]

I will add a third complaint: Howard Zinn is only known because he is partisan. I wonder how many people would be willing in this thread would be willing to weigh in on comparative academic giants like Russel Weigley.

This is a decent point. Bad enough when an academic gets his or her 'star power' (teehee) from actual research and groundbreaking conclusions; so much worse when it's purely derived from writing the equivalent of the Anekdota.

 

[Tee Kay]

This is about the time I realized Zinn had no interest in a fair presentation of the social evolution in the country and stopped reading.

In any case, one should never assume that of any writer.

 

[illram]

I will add a third complaint: Howard Zinn is only known because he is partisan. I wonder how many people would be willing in this thread would be willing to weigh in on comparative academic giants like Russel Weigley.

I don't think Zinn neatly fits into any political category sufficient enough to call him "partisan." He certainly focuses on labor and the underprivileged more than anything else. However both of those categories of people have been equally screwed in various ways by political parties of many stripes over the course of history.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Ah Howard Zinn. Because the Europeans are the source of all war and conflict.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Move from another thread at the suggestion of Shane:

Really so it is worse not to except something because you don't agree regardless of it's factual integrity than to accept something automatically because you agree with it, also regardless of it's factual integrity.

I've read some Zinn and not only do I disagree with him I find him to be factually incorrect on many topics and he also deliberately omits things that don't fit the narrative, and I cannot stand people who hold the narrative over reality.

Care to point out even one example where Zinn lacked "factual integrity"?

Do you consider Fox News to lack "factual integrity"? Do you think many, if not most, of their viewers "hold narrative over integrity"?

And I am far from being in complete agreement with Zinn. I just don't peremptorily vilify those who indeed have "factual integrity" merely because I happen to disagree with some of their opinions. Take William F. Buckley, for instance.

 

[Aegis]

Does any of this falsely portray Roosevelt and his policies, or the events which occurred at that time in history? I think not.

Considering he conveniently omitted his greatest contributions to the country that directly contradict his agenda for the book?

Yes.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Such as?

Did you even bother to read the sections I highlighted above?

What was clear in this period to blacks, to feminists, to labor organizers and socialists, was that they could not count on the national government. True, this was the "Progressive Period," the start of the Age of Reform; but it was a reluctant reform, aimed at quieting the popular risings, not making fundamental changes.

What gave it the name "Progressive" was that new laws were passed. Under Theodore Roosevelt, there was the Meat Inspection Act, the Hepburn Act to regulate railroads and pipelines, a Pure Food and Drug Act. Under Taff, the Mann-Elkins Act put telephone and telegraph systems under the regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. In Woodrow Wilson's presidency, the Federal Trade Commission was introduced to control the growth of monopolies, and the Federal Reserve Act to regulate the country's money and banking system. Under Taft were proposed the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, allowing a graduated income tax, and the Seventeenth Amendment, providing for the election of Senators directly by popular vote instead of by the state legislatures, as the original Constitution provided. Also at this time, a number of states passed laws regulating wages and hours, providing for safety inspection of factories and compensation for injured workmen.

Richard Hofstadter, in his biting chapter on the man the public saw as the great lover of nature and physical fitness, the war hero, the Boy Scout in the White House, says: "The advisers to whom Roosevelt listened were almost exclusively representatives of industrial and finance capital-men like Hanna, Robert Bacon, and George W. Perkins of the House of Morgan, Elihu Root, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich ... and James Stillman of the Rockefeller interests." Responding to his worried brother-in-law writing from Wall Street, Roosevelt replied: "I intend to be most conservative, but in the interests of the corporations themselves and above all in the interests of the country."

Roosevelt supported the regulatory Hepburn Act because he feared something worse. He wrote to Henry Cabot Lodge that the railroad lobbyists who opposed the bill were wrong: "I think they are very shortsighted not to understand that to beat it means to increase the movement for government ownership of the railroads." His action against the trusts was to induce them to accept government regulation, in order to prevent destruction. He prosecuted the Morgan railroad monopoly in the Northern Securities Case, considering it an antitrust victory, but it hardly changed anything, and, although the Sherman Act provided for criminal penalties, there was no prosecution of the men who had planned the monopoly-Morgan, Harriman, Hill.

The Progressive movement, whether led by honest reformers like Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin or disguised conservatives like Roosevelt (who was the Progressive party candidate for President in 1912), seemed to understand it was fending off socialism. The Milwaukee Journal, a Progressive organ, said the conservatives "fight socialism blindly . .. while the Progressives fight it intelligently and seek to remedy the abuses and conditions upon which it thrives."

Frank Munsey, a director of U.S. Steel, writing to Roosevelt, seeing him as the best candidate for 1912, confided in him that the United States must move toward a more "parental guardianship of the people" who needed "the sustaining and guiding hand of the State." It was "the work of the state to think for the people and plan for the people," the steel executive said.

It seems quite clear that much of this intense activity for Progressive reform was intended to head off socialism. Easley talked of "the menace of Socialism as evidenced by its growth in the colleges, churches, newspapers." In 1910, Victor Berger became the first member of the Socialist party elected to Congress; in 1911, seventy-three Socialist mayors were elected, and twelve hundred lesser officials in 340 cities and towns. The press spoke of "The Rising Tide of Socialism."

You seem to think that Teddy Roosevelt was some sort of paragon of liberal virtue merely because he ran for president as a progressive, instead of a warmongering conservative who did all he could to defeat any semblance of socialism.

It is the same mistake that many from the far-right now make about Obama. Simply because their views are more to the right than his doesn't make him a socialist instead of a fellow conservative.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Double post. Plz delete.

 

[Aegis]

Such as?

Such as, has already been posted in post #26.

Did you even bother to read the sections I highlighted above?

I sure did. It’s Zinn speculating and 2nd party letters written to Roosevelt. Aside from those discrepancies, I do not see how what you posted is relevant to what I have been pointing out: Namely that his positive contributions to society, the nation, and history, are written off and attributed to the success of the masses.

If anything, Roosevelt was a disguised liberal. Let’s take a look at his 1912 Progressive Party’s platform:

Spoiler :

In the social sphere the platform called for
• A National Health Service to include all existing government medical agencies.
• Social insurance, to provide for the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled.
• Limited injunctions in strikes.
• A minimum wage law for women
• An eight hour workday
• A federal securities commission
• Farm relief.
• Workers' compensation for work-related injuries.
• An inheritance tax.
• A Constitutional amendment to allow a Federal income tax.
The political reforms proposed included
• Women's suffrage.
• Direct election of Senators.
• Primary elections for state and federal nominations.
The platform also urged states to adopt measures for "direct democracy", including:
• The recall election (citizens may remove an elected official before the end of his term).
• The referendum (citizens may decide on a law by popular vote).
• The initiative (citizens may propose a law by petition and enact it by popular vote).
• Judicial recall (when a court declares a law unconstitutional, the citizens may override that ruling by popular vote).
However, the main theme of the platform was an attack on the domination of politics by business interests, which allegedly controlled both established parties. The platform asserted that
To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

Anyone believing the bold portions to be the agenda of a closet conservative is out of their freaking gourd. That’s pretty liberal, some of which even in this day and age, much less during Roosevelt’s time. The reason why there was a split between Taft & Roosevelt in the first place is that Roosevelt felt that Taft was becoming too conservative.

You seem to think that Teddy Roosevelt was some sort of paragon of liberal virtue instead of a warmongering conservative.

Do I believe that he used our military to increase our influence and power throughout the world, and ended up doing some not-so-nice things? Of course. Do I believe that Roosevelt’s actions were out of line in the age of colonial expansionism or with other Presidents? No, not at all. He was no more a warmonger than any other wartime/imperialistic president.

By all means, talk about a person’s failures & shortcomings, but do not erase their contributions from your version of history just because you disagree with other aspects of their service. A person's positive contributions deserve as much, or more, recognition than their negative.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Such as, has already been posted in post #26.

Which Zinn actually addressed and I have quote twice now, including bolding the relevant portions...

Anyone believing the bold portions to be the agenda of a closet conservative is out of their freaking gourd. That’s pretty liberal, some of which even in this day and age, much less during Roosevelt’s time. The reason why there was a split between Taft & Roosevelt in the first place is that Roosevelt felt that Taft was becoming too conservative.

That certainly is an interesting personal opinion which really cannot be corroborated with facts, as Zinn and other historians have done.

Teddy Roosevelt wasn't a liberal. Far from it. Merely because he was more liberal than Taft doesn't make it so any more than it makes Obama a liberal, much less a socialist. Political labels can be extremely misleading. It is far more telling what Roosevelt did which was largely opposed to what the platform of the Progressive movement stated. On that basis, one would think that Reagan and GWB were fiscal conservatives who were for quite limited government instead of the other way around.

By all means, talk about a person’s failures & shortcomings, but do not erase their contributions from your version of history just because you disagree with other aspects of their service. A person's positive contributions deserve as much, or more, recognition than their negative.

Good thing Zinn didn't do any such thing. Perhaps you should have read more of his book before peremptorily dismissing it merely because it disagreed with your own personal views. His chapter was devoted to the effective eradication of the socialist movement in the US by virtually all American polticians at the time by various means, not the veneration of a quite conservative warmongering president. I'm sure other historians have provided accounts for those who wish to idolize Roosevelt for deeds which he actually fought against while falsely giving the impression he supported them.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Teddy Roosevelt wasn't a liberal. Far from it. Merely because he was more liberal than Taft doesn't make it so any more than it makes Obama a liberal, much less a socialist. Political labels can be extremely misleading. It is far more telling what Roosevelt did which was largely opposed to what the platform of the Progressive movement stated. On that basis, one would think that Reagan and GWB were fiscal conservatives who were for quite limited government instead of the other way around.

Hold it! "Obama is not liberal" Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

 

[Formaldehyde]

That's right. He just isn't as far-right and extremely authoritarian like most Republicans.

There are very few liberals in the US any more. Not that there ever were all that many. They tend to be persecuted and vilified a lot.

 

[MobBoss]

Hmmm. I wonder who answered those questions for Obama on that? Or how they were determined for any of those listed? Or even how much weight should be given to it.