Tiananmen Square stuff.

It was the anniversary of the specific event, not some national holiday commemorating all mankind’s eternal struggle against the inherent evil of government. What did you expect Clinton to do, list every single act of oppression ever carried out by the US and then mention that maybe China’s leadership should acknowledge that it did wrong in ‘89? She’s a politician — her VERY EXISTENCE is an exercise in hypocrisy.

Seriously — what would you rather Clinton did? Just not mention it at all? I’m fine with that, as China is moving towards a capitalist economy naturally and will democratize only with the willingness and work of its own citizens (the rants of foreign politicians will do little for them).

Zinn’s publications are rife with anecdotes-sans-context and examples-sans-citation. He goes out of his way to explain why he doesn’t use extensive notation! He asks insightful questions but can’t answer or even address them accurately or persuasively. If you tend toward dogmatically socialist interpretations of history then Zimm’s probably the best thing since sliced bread, but if not, the more trenchant works of folk like Vonnegurt (literary) or Chomsky (academic) cut straight to the chase and don’t embroider or beat about the bushes as Zinn tends to.

Being a libertarian, I disagree with Chomsky more often than I concur, but you darn well can’t say that he doesn’t know his stuff. The man is a walking encyclopedia and his scholarly publications are, in fact, scholarly — not the trite, politically-correct and apologetic ramblings you get with Zinn.

Johnny, did you photoshop that image to give it that blood-red color? I have always wondered whatever happened to the man who braved the tanks.

I take issue more broadly with the apologetic tone of Zinn’s work and others like it, and the dishonest muddling-together of historical recollection and interpretation said tone engenders. What little objectivity is present is strangled by vamping class conflict apologetics delivered from an uncompromisingly, even dogmatically socialist perspective. That’s not to say the accounts and quotations scattered throughout the book are unmoving, but rather that they’re small facets of a much larger history being focused on specifically and out of context for dramatic effect (Zinn has indeed said he wanted to invite “quiet revolution” through publishing his History).

This style of writing seems bespoke for an ever-more politically-correct audience, and I equate political correctness with intellectual disingenuousness. This can be deliberate or ignorant, mind, but I hold that the more academically-experienced one becomes, the more one must recognize their own inherent biases and the more opportunity one has to ignore, address or build upon them.

Your use of “country[wo]men” is an example of the stuff that irks me. Yes, the patriarchal dogma under which modern society operates is surely oppressive and unjust. The four extra characters don’t bother me instrinsically; what bothers me is that the only people those characters mean anything to are the types of people who need to see affirmation or recognition of their struggles, worldviews, mindsets etc in the behaviors of other people (or, indeed, people who think offering said lot feigned PC nicety is a good or prudent practice). Zinn has in fact gone out of his way to apologize for not mentioning specific races and social groups WITHIN his own books, as if the act of focusing on a specific group intrinsically means one is DELIBERATELY ignoring all others. That is the epitome of dishonest bull**** and SHOULD be shameful for anybody with a shred of integrity.

All that said, it really isn’t something to worry about. I don’t find these types of anecdotal, personally-motivated “historical” books appealing.

A note here — I normally don’t use so much ALL CAPS, as I equate it with yelling, but I can’t preview my comments and I don’t want to make an ugly post with non-rendered HTML or BBcode tags all over the place. I’m not yelling those words, just using CAPS in place of italics/bold.

The pendulum can definitely swing either direction regards intepretation of PC. I hold that it muddies the waters and unnecessarily frills-up communication — that is to say, it’s easy to tell when people are going out of their way to be PC, and it comes off as trite and offensive (even to folk it’s meant to appease) often enough so as to be counter-productive. Addressing the paragraphs of your post:

1) Apologetic pandering and atonement are better or more acceptable than pointing said actions out where & when one encounters them? If one accepts that the former is disingenuous then the latter is necessary, assuming one values honesty in argument. I hold that detached pandering is an embodiment of disingenuousness.

2) I missed the Clinton connection; my point was about political correctness itself and how it tends to distract from the substance of conversation more than anything else (it certainly wasn’t about you). Humankind is actually less descriptive than mankind — it has only one connotation. I should think people are able to decipher via context whether a person saying “mankind” was referring to men specifically or to all humanity.

3) I addressed this above — call it what you will; PC, pandering, atonement, whathaveyou. Assuming people are too stupid to comprehend context or too easily offended to tolerate use of “mankind” is presumptuous at best. But this is a ridiculous semantic argument, just as mine was — the real issue is deeper regards Zinn’s book.

4) Nothing whatsoever to do with PC, and no, that’s not what I’m claiming (I’m not making claims about you that I’m aware of — on reading back over it, it probably sounded like I did, and I apologize). I’m simply saying Zinn tends to pluck points in history from context and address them as if specific “elite” persons and/or groups were the soul and intrinsically malevolent source of their woes (again, we’re back to dogmatic socialist intepretations of history — people with control of the means of production are to be decried, people without it are to be lauded as martyrs).

If Zinn’s methodology isn’t an example of PC negatively affecting discourse about a critical issue, I don’t know what is. But again, we get back to style — he wrote the book to invite “quiet revolution”. There are more effective ways of addressing cultural and state imperialism, and Zinn has never employed them (not to my knowledge, anyway — he’s prolific and I haven’t read all his work).

I am not getting into this argument!! :):)

But, nothing that the US Govt has done, vis-a-vis the native Americans come s close to what Stalin or Mao did to their people, or even what happened in Tian-an-Men square. In most cases, US soldiers and Native Americans fought pretty evenly matched battles, and in some battles the US soldiers or settlers won, and in other cases the Native Americans won.
revisionist or critical historians lik e Zinn , however, will always try to misinterprete events to suit their own particular viewpoint. in Zinn’s case, his quest in life is to vilify US society, so, obviously, he wil l twist history and interprete it to meet his needs.
Zinn and Chomsky ( when he is not writing about linguistics) are two major academic frauds, both protected by the traditions and rules of academic tenure, unfortunately.

Chomsky is a fraud, when he tries to be a scholar critical of US domestic or Foreign Policy. As a scholar on Linguistics, he is respected by all in that field.

As far as Zinn and “new history” is concerned, I dont understand how writing history that is biased,and sometimes in direct contradiction of facts, helps the folks who have suffered from not being the privileged party. Seems to defeat the point of searching for teh truth,if essentially, he admits to makingstuff up to help the ones who have been victims of the hegemons.

Which is why, in good history Departments, no one takes him very seriously,a nd even NPR or the Lehrer Hour wont invite him. Only media outlet that quotes him is the ultra-leftist, fringe network that is Pacifica Radio.

Johnny, your point is well taken.
BTW, since you studied Philosophy, you might find this story interesting. A friend, who is a Philosophy Professor at local univ, and i started off a “Socrates Cafe” in Ann Arbor, both having been inspired by Christopher Phillips book. But, even in a place like Ann Arbor, we couldnt get the group going. We never managed to get regular, sane people to attend. All we got were people with mental health issues with crazy ideas, single issue freaks, weird dorks and geeks,and my friend even got a stalker!!!! We ran the group at various places, the Public Lbrary, book stores, Senior Centers etc, nothing worked.
After K got the stalker harassing her to the point the cops had to get involved, we just quit!!!! I now attend an informal discussion group at the Univ of Michigan’s Philosophy Dept. Kinda sad, that the Socrates Cafe idea failed in a place like A2.