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Obligatory challenging of the status quo about Howard Zinn: http://hnn.us/articles/1493.html http://hnn.us/articles/1493.html

kingkawn 17y ago
To insist on appending an angry, trashy review on the day the man died is especially graceless.
- lionhearted 17y ago
  > To insist on appending an angry, trashy review on the day the man died is especially graceless. I'm glad the commentor did, because this will likely be the first and last discussion of Howard Zinn on Hacker News, and the review had some important points.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - rms 17y ago
    I thought it was inappropriate, not for questioning Zinn, but for doing so in a way much more biased than Zinn himself. Zinn was a great historian; Daniel J. Flynn is the proud author of Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation’s Greatness. Flynn loses any remaining credit for calling Zinn a Marxist, continuously. That's a label chosen for its emotional resonance; not its meaning. Zinn was a socialist, a libertarian socialist, an anarchist sympathizer, a leftist... but he didn't go around labeling himself as a Marxist on the back of the books, that's something only done by his critics. I might as well be calling Flynn a fascist.
    - lionhearted 17y ago
      > I thought it was inappropriate, not for questioning Zinn, but for doing so in a way much more biased than Zinn himself. Eh, the review was nothing special, but the fact that Zinn left out that the side he labeled as oppressed started the Pequot War with a murder seemed like an important detail. Or the fact that war was primarily Indian tribes vs. other Indian tribes, and the Anglo component was less than 20% of the winning side. But, you can't let the facts get in the way of a good story. I imagine Zinn himself would agree he was more of an activist than a historian, and he fits history to his activism. The uberpatriot people aren't any better and might well be worse, but the message is more important than the messenger. Pointing out that a man claiming to be a historian is leaving out entirely crucial historical details is important.
      - rms 17y ago
        By the point of that war the white people had been oppressing the Indians for more than a hundred years. One murder does not justify returning with a massacre, and leaving out various facts from history does not mean much when you are trying to retell a whole lot of history. If people want a different telling of history, there is always Wikipedia. Also, if you read Wikipedia, you will see that Daniel Flynn's understanding of the Pequot War is completely wrong. I will quote him, and then let you read the Wikipedia article yourself. >Thus the Pequot violence against whites that led to the war is almost entirely absent from the text. The most Zinn can bring himself to admit is that “Massacres took place on both sides.” In fact, the author details only the atrocities committed by one side: the Puritans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pequot_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pequot_War
guitarjunkie 17y ago
One expects to read clear, honest disagreement in regard to a leftist activist on a news site devoted ,at least partially, to startup culture, but that review is a complete joke. This isn't an obligatory challenging, its an ideological hit piece masquerading as a book review. If this sounds like an over the top response to the above comment, this is the bio blurb at the top of the review; "Mr. Flynn is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia and author of the newly released, Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation’s Greatness." Does "Why the left hates america" sound like an unbiased, historically accurate take on anything? The below response is also dead on, this was completely graceless.
deleted 17y ago
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kingkawn 17y ago

To insist on appending an angry, trashy review on the day the man died is especially graceless.

lionhearted 17y ago
> To insist on appending an angry, trashy review on the day the man died is especially graceless. I'm glad the commentor did, because this will likely be the first and last discussion of Howard Zinn on Hacker News, and the review had some important points.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- rms 17y ago
  I thought it was inappropriate, not for questioning Zinn, but for doing so in a way much more biased than Zinn himself. Zinn was a great historian; Daniel J. Flynn is the proud author of Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation’s Greatness. Flynn loses any remaining credit for calling Zinn a Marxist, continuously. That's a label chosen for its emotional resonance; not its meaning. Zinn was a socialist, a libertarian socialist, an anarchist sympathizer, a leftist... but he didn't go around labeling himself as a Marxist on the back of the books, that's something only done by his critics. I might as well be calling Flynn a fascist.
  - lionhearted 17y ago
    > I thought it was inappropriate, not for questioning Zinn, but for doing so in a way much more biased than Zinn himself. Eh, the review was nothing special, but the fact that Zinn left out that the side he labeled as oppressed started the Pequot War with a murder seemed like an important detail. Or the fact that war was primarily Indian tribes vs. other Indian tribes, and the Anglo component was less than 20% of the winning side. But, you can't let the facts get in the way of a good story. I imagine Zinn himself would agree he was more of an activist than a historian, and he fits history to his activism. The uberpatriot people aren't any better and might well be worse, but the message is more important than the messenger. Pointing out that a man claiming to be a historian is leaving out entirely crucial historical details is important.
    - rms 17y ago
      By the point of that war the white people had been oppressing the Indians for more than a hundred years. One murder does not justify returning with a massacre, and leaving out various facts from history does not mean much when you are trying to retell a whole lot of history. If people want a different telling of history, there is always Wikipedia. Also, if you read Wikipedia, you will see that Daniel Flynn's understanding of the Pequot War is completely wrong. I will quote him, and then let you read the Wikipedia article yourself. >Thus the Pequot violence against whites that led to the war is almost entirely absent from the text. The most Zinn can bring himself to admit is that “Massacres took place on both sides.” In fact, the author details only the atrocities committed by one side: the Puritans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pequot_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pequot_War

guitarjunkie 17y ago

One expects to read clear, honest disagreement in regard to a leftist activist on a news site devoted ,at least partially, to startup culture, but that review is a complete joke. This isn't an obligatory challenging, its an ideological hit piece masquerading as a book review. If this sounds like an over the top response to the above comment, this is the bio blurb at the top of the review; "Mr. Flynn is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia and author of the newly released, Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation’s Greatness." Does "Why the left hates america" sound like an unbiased, historically accurate take on anything? The below response is also dead on, this was completely graceless.

deleted 17y ago

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