I read your blog and I find that you’re right — undoubtedly far right. That’s okay. When you retire you can join the John Birch Society, where you will also be undoubtedly welcome. I think perhaps that you have missed my point. The reason why college professors use Zinn is precisely because they are concerned that their students are “students of American History and critical thinkers.”

And in Zinn’s own words: “I would not have been a historian if I thought that it would become my professional duty to never emerge from the past, to study long-gone events and remember them only for their uniqueness, not connecting them to events going on in our time.” — Howard Zinn (2007)

Relax. Take a deep breath. Be secure in the fact that there are other right wing conservatives to support your rhetoric and you can be what you seem to need most: “to be right” and impress the world with your knowledge. By the way, if you hope to render with any seriousness your point of view with the less than conservative crowd — try getting the facts and spout less of your personal rhetoric. I am not impressed that you wrote three more blogs filled with your own opinions — I wonder in fact if you’ve ever tried to read the likes of Zinn or any other less than conservative historian with an open mind.

But alas, I still defend your right to express yourself even if I do not agree with you. The point remains (at least for a little longer) we can both express our opinions without fear of persecution. Oh wait…. is that a Homeland Security Van that just pulled into my yard?

http://www.blog4history.com/2009/12/teaching-social-justice-in-the-classroom/
http://www.blog4history.com/2009/01/howard-zinn-in-the-classroom/
http://www.blog4history.com/2009/01/final-thoughts-on-zinn-and-history/
http://www.blog4history.com/2009/12/teaching-social-justice-in-the-classroom/

Why do liberal teachers and universities use Zinn? The fact that you have not the slightest clue is itself telling. So, once again, it is because they agree with him (his activism) and SEEM more interested in creating social activists like themselves, instead of students of American History and critical thinkers. At best, Zinn was a historian who could not separate his politics from the past, and therefore committed himself to judging the past based on his own world view. Presentism.

For a great breakdown on just some of Zinn’s inaccuracies in his book, I refer you here:
http://hnn.us/articles/4370.html

Chris

That said, one of the best books I’ve used in freshmen US history classes is Charles Dew’s “Apostles of Disunion” in which Dews clearly demonstrates that, throughout the South, every southern knew that slavery was the issue before the states broke their ties with the Union. The articles by Marx (and others) demonstrate that this was well known, as the cause of the war, around the world. Marx is writing in England to a European paper about the causes of the war. There’s even a better, more clearly stated article that Marx wrote, at about the same time, for the New York Daily Tribune (it’s included in the Penguin “Dispatches” compilation). So, should you include this evidence in an AP history class — definitely because it addresses the attempt by some to rewrite history to cloud the real reasons behind this war. This was only about states’ rights as those rights pertained to slavery, and that the “peculiar institution” of slavery and it’s continuation, into the future, was the sole reason for the South’s attempt to dissolve the union.

You can then tie this to the expunged material of the Declaration of Independence, the provisions institutionalizing slavery in the Constitution, the various “compromises,” the role slavery played when a bunch of Mexican citizens (southern immigrants to Mexico) committed treason rather than free their slaves, thus creating the republic of Texas as a slaveholding nation (because the US couldn’t bring it in as a slave state until there was another free state with which to balance it). In fact, there is so much in US History prior to 1877 that can ONLY make sense if you keep slavery at the heart of the question.