Assignment: HOWARD ZINN
Assumptions
"When I actually sat down to write, it took less than a year to write it. I wrote it because after the movements of the sixties people had been radicalized and people became dissatisfied with the traditional history, and wanted histories that showed working people and black people and Native Americans and women. And I was aware that no such book existed, that no such history existed. So I decided that I would try to fill that gap."
Beliefs
"I don't believe in neutrality because the world is already moving in certain directions and wars are going on and children are going hungry. Terrible things are happening. And so to be neutral in a situation like this when things are already moving is to collaborate with whatever is going on. And I don't want to collaborate with the world as it is. I want to intrude myself. I want to participate in changing the direction of things. So that's the origin of the title, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train."
Values
I was just a seventeen-year-old kid, going to Times Square to participate in this left-wing demonstration. I really didn't know what was going on. But it seemed good. The signs were for peace and justice and so on. But then at this peaceful demonstration, I was attacked by police mounted on horseback and on foot. Before I knew it, I was clubbed and knocked unconscious. You might say I woke up with a new consciousness. I woke up realizing that things my radical friends had been saying to me were really true, that the police and the government were not detached bystanders that freedom of speech did not really exist for dissenters, for radicals, for troublemakers. So it gave me a radical view of the United States, a critical view of the role of the state and of the instruments of the state-the police, the Army, and so on-as not being neutral at all in political battles, but being generally against workers and against striking people, against dissenters of all kinds.
LARRY SCHWEIKART
Assumptions
Just 35 years ago, our book would have simply been called, "A History of the United States." Today, virtually all of the so-called "mainstream" texts range from moderately biased to completely and overwhelmingly biased against a free-market, limited-government perspective. Their slant is sometimes blunt, often clever and always varied to make absolutely certain that if one technique doesn't work on unsuspecting students, another will.
Beliefs
Likewise, despite 40 years' worth of regulatory attack, the American economic system still remains the most productive in the world, due to a higher degree of private property rights and competition. In our book, we celebrate those who created and cultivated these pillars, while at the same time deconstructing numerous myths of the Left. The result is that any student reading "A Patriot's History" will have a hard time suppressing pride in being an American.
Values
The history of the United States is not only inspiring; it is essentially "conservative," in that it reaffirms many of those values that conservatives (and many libertarians) today hold dear. And the best news is that one does not have to distort the evidence to tell the story of a great country.
Ultimately, learning "just the facts" of the American past leads a student to inevitably conclude that the United States is the best place on earth, and that it has acted, for the most part, far better than any other nation at any other time. If that generates a feeling of patriotism - or makes one a patriot - so be it.
After reviewing Zinn's and Schweikart's personal assumptions, beliefs, and values as well as excerpts from their historical writing, respond to the following questions:
• What do you believe to be the major distinctions in their personal assumptions, beliefs, and values?
• What do you believe to be the major distinctions in their interpretations of history?
• Do you notice any biases? If so, what are they?