For example, the future president of the USA may believe that if the government should print and hand out a million dollar bill to each citizen, that would solve the problem of poverty; but unless he is prepared to listen to an economist, who will tell him that this policy would cause mass inflation, his good intentions will result in a financial catastrophe whose chief victims will be the poor.

This is an exaggeration, I admit, but is Zinn’s philosophy all that different? Anyone who doesn’t share his ideology simply doesn’t stand a chance at convincing him or his followers that he is wrong. Add to that a willingness to believe in any conspiracy theory that will spare one the trouble of defending one’s position intelligently to outsiders, and the radical left’s presumed infallibility can only lead to mental stagnation, as Karl Popper long ago foresaw. I’d call this the Stalinization of intellectual life.

The problem with Zinn and other moonbats is that they fail to realize that, by substituting belief for reason as the guiding principle of politics, they do but strengthen the fundamentalist right, who are just as unlikely as radical leftists to be swayed by unaided reason. A generation is being brought up without any training in critical thinking (and by critical thinking I do not mean the blind acceptance of critical theory dogma), prey to a host of competing beliefs without any tools to judge which is right and which is wrong. And that, boys and girls, is very bad news.

On the subject of History I know of what I speak. I have always had a love of history and although I am not a professional historian hold three degrees in that discipline. I say that not to toot my horn but to show some knowledge of the subject.

As such I am familiar with Howard Zinn. Zinn is a socialist (some may even characterize him as a quasi communist). His view of history is that all historical events stem from social issues that dovetail socialist ideology. He starts with that conclusion and then works back to prove it.

By starting with a conclusion and then searching for facts to support it while ignoring or discarding counter facts is dishonest. A true historian should be looking for the truth, not manufacturing it. The idea of two or more truths is preposterous on its face. But it does serve those who have an agenda which the proven facts refute. Thus they can claim that: yes the facts support A but B is also true. In other words they are not dissuaded or deterred by the facts. They hold to an ideology regardless!

In the world there are two type of liars. Those who flat out knowingly tell falsehoods, and those who tell only selected portions of the truth that support their agenda while deliberately omitting that which refutes it. I have always felt that Zinn was in the latter category. If you are familiar with him you can tell the direction and conclusion of his works before reading them. That, in my judgment, is not a true historian but a propagandist who is trying to sell an idea.

The school teacher comment mentioned in Mr. Goldblatt’s article ties it up. The teacher has a social and political agenda and is looking for support of it. Zinn fulfills that, hence he is the white knight. Anyone who questions or refutes Zinn — and the facts be damned — is wearing the black hat. It is the teacher and Zinn who are marching to a specific drum beat in which objectivity and opposing facts have no place.

If science were to act this way we would still be living in the stone age.

Kudos to Walter Kirn and Mark Goldblatt