Howard Zinn looks like he is doing great. He will be 87 years old in August. Zinn is interviewed by The Real News below and, says that President Obama economic actions are wrong. He says that by pouring trillions of dollars into the banking system, Obama is showing allegiance to the failed Republican theory of “trickle down.”
Zinn says that in this time of big problems, Obama should use government directly to solve these big problems. He says we use government to go to war, because war is a big problem and we all agree that only government has the resources to conduct war. Zinn says that Obama is wrong to think that the best way to create jobs is by stimulating business and points out that FDR created jobs through direct government action. Obama hopes to create two million jobs or so, but with the same funds, Zinn says, he could have created twelve million.
I’m reminded that Zinn wrote the classic, A people’s History Of The United States. I’m going to search for my copy and reread it.
I like The Real News. The Real News says it want to ask questions that have long been neglected by the corporate news media. The Real News is looking for financial support, and I hope they succeed in becoming the independent news source they hope to become.
Howard Zinn’s “People’s History” is a remarkable bit of left wing propaganda and betrays Zinn’s own personal prejudices.
In the issue I have, where Zinn dicussess WWI he has next to nothing to say about the anti-German hysteria, but does discuss the repression of the socialists and the subsequent Palmer raids.
The socialist movement, though larger than today, was still relatively small. Yet the anti-German hysteria, which was one of the great outpourings of nativist xenophobia, was quite widespread. It’s telling Zinn fails to disucss in depth the more prominent illustration of repression, perhaps becuase it doesn’t fall into Zinn’s left/right framework, or perhaps Zinn is a Jew and has a personal axe to grind against the Germans.
Which I guess is fine if his intention is to write a polemical work.