Uncommon
Sense
from the Writings of
Howard Zinn
Uncommon
Sense
from the Writings of
Howard Zinn
Selected and Introduced by
Dean Birkenkamp and Wanda Rhudy
First published 2009 by Paradigm Publishers
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zinn, Howard, 1922
Uncommon sense from the writings of Howard Zinn / selected and introduced by Dean Birkenkamp and Wanda Rhudy.
p. cm. (Critical narrative series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-59451-713-6 (jacketed hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Zinn, Howard, 1922Political and social views. I. Birkenkamp, Dean. II. Rhudy, Wanda. III. Title.
E175.5.Z56Z56 2009
973.07202dc22
2008050025
ISBN 13 : 978-1-59451-713-6 (hbk)
ISBN 13 : 978-1-59451-714-3 (pbk)
Designed and Typeset by Straight Creek Bookmakers.
Contents
This book has its inspiration in a remark made by a college student, about twenty years old. She was among the hundreds milling in the hallways, hoping to enter the overfilled, 1,500-seat Glen Miller Ballroom at the University of Colorado on a December night in 2006. Like her, we were among the unlucky many stranded outside the ballroom, blocked from entry to Howard Zinns speech by a line of police (not his favorite mode of crowd control). Several hundred of us stayed in the halls, hoping against the unlikely possibility that some of the more fortunate in the ballroom eventually would vacate their seats.
Nearly an hour after the speech commenced, some of us still lingered in the hallways and just talkedabout Bush and his war, about the sixties, about Howard Zinn and our disappointment at not hearing him speak.
The young woman (well never know her name) said brightly, He just has a way of saying things that is so memorable, he writes like nobody else.
We were thinking of her words later when we were able to get into an audio-only room set up with large speakers. There we savored the wisdom in Professor Zinns words, impromptu now in the customary Q & A aftermath of the speech.
Later that evening we spent two hours with Professor Zinn over a late-night snack at his hotel. Joining us was David Barsamian, the Alternative Radio impresario who has interviewed and broadcast Zinn more than any other journalist. We learned from Howard, still youthful at eighty-four years old, that Boulder was his last stop on his last speaking tourif I keep my promise to my family, he said with his usual wry humor. For this reason, and many othershis inspiring words, the energy and persistence of the youthful crowdsit seemed a momentous night.
In case Howard keeps his promise, we thought it prudent to assemble this book. The books quotations are selected from scores of writings over a span of six decades. All are drawn from detailed narratives written about specific events, places, people, or topics. Readers acquainted with Zinns writings will notice some familiar phrases. They will also appreciate many more that are new to them. Even readers broadly knowledgeable of his corpus will find that the reading of these statements of principle, isolated from specific narratives, and juxtaposedwe hopein some sensible order, brings new and added meaning to his words.
Howard Zinn has been famous as a historian, speaker, playwright, progressive, debunker, humorist, teacher, and activist. Perhaps this book shows that he should be equally known as a philosopher. As we selected these quotations, we marveled at the wisdom and power of his writings and his consistency of visionever probing and expandingthroughout sixty years of writing. Like the best philosophers, he possesses an instinct for human decency and human nature that forms the essence of his critiques of all the powerful institutional forces of government, justice, war, democracy, and more.
Thus the collection could be seen as Professor Zinns statement of political and moral philosophy. Unlike the books of many philosophers, this is not a long, ponderous treatise for the reader to endure. Instead it is a work of vivid history and living thought, reflecting the life of this man of deep convictions and risk-taking activism. It is a small book handy at the bed stand late at night, when the mind seeks depth, assurance, and optimism. We hope readers will savor and appreciate his quotations as much as we did while assembling them. We hope, too, that the book will serve as an inspiration for personal direction and action.
Dean Birkenkamp and Wanda Rhudy
Boulder and Montrose, Colorado
H istory is not inevitably useful. It can bind us or free us.
The Politics of History
When we compel the past to speak, we want neither the gibberish of total recall nor the nostalgia of fond memories; we would like the past to speak wisely to our present needs.
New Deal Thought
Recalling the rhetoric of the past, and measuring it against the actual past, may enable us to see through our current bamboozlement, where the reality is still unfolding, and the discrepancies still not apparent.
The Politics of History
If you can decide whats in peoples history and whats left out, you can order their thinking. You can order their values. You can in effect organize their brains by controlling their knowledge.
Failure to Quit
History can help our struggles, if not conclusively, then at least suggestively. History can disabuse us of the idea that the governments interests and the peoples interests are the same.
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
There is an underside to every age about which history does not often speak, because history is written from records left by the privileged. We learn about politics from the political leaders, about economics from the entrepreneurs, about slavery from the plantation owners, about the thinking of an age from its intellectual elite.
