[Fwd: happy Fourth, all-- Fourth of July essays below from Howard
——– Original Message ——–
Subject: happy Fourth, all– Fourth of July essays below from Howard
Zinn, Eyal Press, et. al…
Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 14:50:42 -0400
From: Joel Tyner
To: Real Majority Project
From http://www.progressive.org/zinn070309.html …
Untold Truths About the American Revolution
/By Howard Zinn, July 3, 2009/
There are things that happen in the world that are bad, and you want to
do something about them. You have a just cause. But our culture is so
war prone that we immediately jump from, ³This is a good cause² to ³This
deserves a war.²
You need to be very, very comfortable in making that jump.
The American Revolutionindependence from Englandwas a just cause. Why
should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England? But
therefore, did we have to go to the Revolutionary War?
How many people died in the Revolutionary War?
Nobody ever knows exactly how many people die in wars, but it¹s likely
that 25,000 to 50,000 people died in this one. So let¹s take the lower
figure25,000 people died out of a population of three million. That
would be equivalent today to two and a half million people dying to get
England off our backs.
You might consider that worth it, or you might not.
Canada is independent of England, isn¹t it? I think so. Not a bad
society. Canadians have good health care. They have a lot of things we
don¹t have. They didn¹t fight a bloody revolutionary war. Why do we
assume that we had to fight a bloody revolutionary war to get rid of
England?
In the year before those famous shots were fired, farmers in Western
Massachusetts had driven the British government out without firing a
single shot. They had assembled by the thousands and thousands around
courthouses and colonial offices and they had just taken over and they
said goodbye to the British officials. It was a nonviolent revolution
that took place. But then came Lexington and Concord, and the revolution
became violent, and it was run not by the farmers but by the Founding
Fathers. The farmers were rather poor; the Founding Fathers were rather
rich.
Who actually gained from that victory over England? It¹s very important
to ask about any policy, and especially about war: Who gained what? And
it¹s very important to notice differences among the various parts of the
population. That¹s one thing were not accustomed to in this country
because we don¹t think in class terms. We think, ³Oh, we all have the
same interests.² For instance, we think that we all had the same
interests in independence from England. We did not have all the same
interests.
Do you think the Indians cared about independence from England? No, in
fact, the Indians were unhappy that we won independence from England,
because England had set a linein the Proclamation of 1763that said you
couldn¹t go westward into Indian territory. They didn¹t do it because
they loved the Indians. They didn¹t want trouble. When Britain was
defeated in the Revolutionary War, that line was eliminated, and now the
way was open for the colonists to move westward across the continent,
which they did for the next 100 years, committing massacres and making
sure that they destroyed Indian civilization.
So when you look at the American Revolution, there¹s a fact that you
have to take into consideration. Indiansno, they didn¹t benefit.
Did blacks benefit from the American Revolution?
Slavery was there before. Slavery was there after. Not only that, we
wrote slavery into the Constitution. We legitimized it.
What about class divisions?
Did ordinary white farmers have the same interest in the revolution as a
John Hancock or Morris or Madison or Jefferson or the slaveholders or
the bondholders? Not really.
It was not all the common people getting together to fight against
England. They had a very hard time assembling an army. They took poor
guys and promised them land. They browbeat people and, oh yes, they
inspired people with the Declaration of Independence. It¹s always good,
if you want people to go to war, to give them a good document and have
good words: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, when
they wrote the Constitution, they were more concerned with property than
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You should take notice of
these little things.
There were class divisions. When you assess and evaluate a war, when you
assess and evaluate any policy, you have to ask: Who gets what?
We were a class society from the beginning. America started off as a
society of rich and poor, people with enormous grants of land and people
with no land. And there were riots, there were bread riots in Boston,
and riots and rebellions all over the colonies, of poor against rich, of
tenants breaking into jails to release people who were in prison for
nonpayment of debt. There was class conflict. We try to pretend in this
country that we¹re all one happy family. We¹re not.
And so when you look at the American Revolution, you have to look at it
in terms of class.
Do you know that there were mutinies in the American Revolutionary Army
by the privates against the officers? The officers were getting fine
clothes and good food and high pay and the privates had no shoes and bad
clothes and they weren¹t getting paid. They mutinied.
Thousands of them. So many in the Pennsylvania line that George
Washington got worried, so he made compromises with them. But later when
there was a smaller mutiny in the New Jersey line, not with thousands
but with hundreds, Washington said execute the leaders, and they were
executed by fellow mutineers on the order of their officers.
The American Revolution was not a simple affair of all of us against all
of them. And not everyone thought they would benefit from the Revolution.
We¹ve got to rethink this question of war and come to the conclusion
that war cannot be accepted, no matter what the reasons given, or the
excuse: liberty, democracy; this, that. War is by definition the
indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends that are
uncertain. Think about means and ends, and apply it to war. The means
are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you
hesitate.
Once a historical event has taken place, it becomes very hard to imagine
that you could have achieved a result some other way. When something is
happening in history it takes on a certain air of inevitability: This is
the only way it could have happened. No.
We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand
that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.
*Howard Zinn* is the author of ³A People¹s History of the United
States.² The History Channel is running an adaptation called ³The People
Speak.² This article is an excerpt from Zinn¹s cover story, “Just Cause
Does Not Equal Just War.” in the July issue of The Progressive.
[Fwd: happy Fourth, all-- Fourth of July essays below from Howard
——– Original Message ——–
Subject: happy Fourth, all– Fourth of July essays below from Howard
Zinn, Eyal Press, et. al…
Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 14:50:42 -0400
From: Joel Tyner
To: Real Majority Project
From http://www.progressive.org/zinn070309.html …
Untold Truths About the American Revolution
/By Howard Zinn, July 3, 2009/
There are things that happen in the world that are bad, and you want to
do something about them. You have a just cause. But our culture is so
war prone that we immediately jump from, ³This is a good cause² to ³This
deserves a war.²
You need to be very, very comfortable in making that jump.
The American Revolutionindependence from Englandwas a just cause. Why
should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England? But
therefore, did we have to go to the Revolutionary War?
How many people died in the Revolutionary War?
Nobody ever knows exactly how many people die in wars, but it¹s likely
that 25,000 to 50,000 people died in this one. So let¹s take the lower
figure25,000 people died out of a population of three million. That
would be equivalent today to two and a half million people dying to get
England off our backs.
You might consider that worth it, or you might not.
Canada is independent of England, isn¹t it? I think so. Not a bad
society. Canadians have good health care. They have a lot of things we
don¹t have. They didn¹t fight a bloody revolutionary war. Why do we
assume that we had to fight a bloody revolutionary war to get rid of
England?
In the year before those famous shots were fired, farmers in Western
Massachusetts had driven the British government out without firing a
single shot. They had assembled by the thousands and thousands around
courthouses and colonial offices and they had just taken over and they
said goodbye to the British officials. It was a nonviolent revolution
that took place. But then came Lexington and Concord, and the revolution
became violent, and it was run not by the farmers but by the Founding
Fathers. The farmers were rather poor; the Founding Fathers were rather
rich.
Who actually gained from that victory over England? It¹s very important
to ask about any policy, and especially about war: Who gained what? And
it¹s very important to notice differences among the various parts of the
population. That¹s one thing were not accustomed to in this country
because we don¹t think in class terms. We think, ³Oh, we all have the
same interests.² For instance, we think that we all had the same
interests in independence from England. We did not have all the same
interests.
Do you think the Indians cared about independence from England? No, in
fact, the Indians were unhappy that we won independence from England,
because England had set a linein the Proclamation of 1763that said you
couldn¹t go westward into Indian territory. They didn¹t do it because
they loved the Indians. They didn¹t want trouble. When Britain was
defeated in the Revolutionary War, that line was eliminated, and now the
way was open for the colonists to move westward across the continent,
which they did for the next 100 years, committing massacres and making
sure that they destroyed Indian civilization.
So when you look at the American Revolution, there¹s a fact that you
have to take into consideration. Indiansno, they didn¹t benefit.
Did blacks benefit from the American Revolution?
Slavery was there before. Slavery was there after. Not only that, we
wrote slavery into the Constitution. We legitimized it.
What about class divisions?
Did ordinary white farmers have the same interest in the revolution as a
John Hancock or Morris or Madison or Jefferson or the slaveholders or
the bondholders? Not really.
It was not all the common people getting together to fight against
England. They had a very hard time assembling an army. They took poor
guys and promised them land. They browbeat people and, oh yes, they
inspired people with the Declaration of Independence. It¹s always good,
if you want people to go to war, to give them a good document and have
good words: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, when
they wrote the Constitution, they were more concerned with property than
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You should take notice of
these little things.
There were class divisions. When you assess and evaluate a war, when you
assess and evaluate any policy, you have to ask: Who gets what?
We were a class society from the beginning. America started off as a
society of rich and poor, people with enormous grants of land and people
with no land. And there were riots, there were bread riots in Boston,
and riots and rebellions all over the colonies, of poor against rich, of
tenants breaking into jails to release people who were in prison for
nonpayment of debt. There was class conflict. We try to pretend in this
country that we¹re all one happy family. We¹re not.
And so when you look at the American Revolution, you have to look at it
in terms of class.
Do you know that there were mutinies in the American Revolutionary Army
by the privates against the officers? The officers were getting fine
clothes and good food and high pay and the privates had no shoes and bad
clothes and they weren¹t getting paid. They mutinied.
Thousands of them. So many in the Pennsylvania line that George
Washington got worried, so he made compromises with them. But later when
there was a smaller mutiny in the New Jersey line, not with thousands
but with hundreds, Washington said execute the leaders, and they were
executed by fellow mutineers on the order of their officers.
The American Revolution was not a simple affair of all of us against all
of them. And not everyone thought they would benefit from the Revolution.
We¹ve got to rethink this question of war and come to the conclusion
that war cannot be accepted, no matter what the reasons given, or the
excuse: liberty, democracy; this, that. War is by definition the
indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends that are
uncertain. Think about means and ends, and apply it to war. The means
are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you
hesitate.
Once a historical event has taken place, it becomes very hard to imagine
that you could have achieved a result some other way. When something is
happening in history it takes on a certain air of inevitability: This is
the only way it could have happened. No.
We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand
that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.
*Howard Zinn* is the author of ³A People¹s History of the United
States.² The History Channel is running an adaptation called ³The People
Speak.² This article is an excerpt from Zinn¹s cover story, “Just Cause
Does Not Equal Just War.” in the July issue of The Progressive.
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