In Howard Zinn’s book, Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice, Chapter 1 entitled, “Introduction: American Ideology, “talks about different ideas and beliefs. One of them is the idea that western people came up centuries ago, which was that black’s people are less than humans. This idea was presented by political leaders and accepted by the American public in 1964, this idea led to mass murder and cost millions of lives, including those of 55,000 young Americans. Another idea that he talk about was that America left the poor on their own (“laissez-faire”) and help the rich (“economic growth”). When Regan was the president “laissez faire meant budget cutting for family care, which led to high rates of infant mortality in city ghettos”
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But instead we hear arguments about our “military budget whether to spend $300 billion or $290 billion.”(Zinn 3). We are leaving in a society where our choice of ideas is limited, and certain ideas dominate such as “If you work hard enough, you'll make a good living. If you are poor, you have only yourself to blame.” Or “be realistic; this is the way things are; there’s no point thinking about how thing should be “(Zinn 3). We hear this ideas on our everyday life and we hear them from our parents, schools, churches and television, the bad thing is that most Americans …show more content…
Most people believe that experts see more clearly and think more intelligently than ordinary citizens, and that these experts have the same interest as ordinary citizens, want the same things and can be trusted to make decision for all of us, but they are all false assumptions. What they don't understand is that the decisions of our society are within the capacity of ordinary citizens. Citizens understand their own interest more clearly than any expert, and the mind of all human beings are more powerful together, it does not matter whether you are rich or poor, male or female, black or white. We are not starting from scratch. There is a long history in this country about different tragedies, but we could still change it.
The other essay that caught my attention in Howard Zinn’s book was “The Use and Abuse of History”. Zinn discusses how history is used and abused. Till this day our Society only tell us about “impartial history,” meaning that we leave parts of history out to make a certain group or certain event stick out. Most of the people understand the “common known facts and hitherto ignored facts.” (Zinn 51) but we need to try to discover the rest on our own, which
But instead we hear arguments about our “military budget whether to spend $300 billion or $290 billion.”(Zinn 3). We are leaving in a society where our choice of ideas is limited, and certain ideas dominate such as “If you work hard enough, you'll make a good living. If you are poor, you have only yourself to blame.” Or “be realistic; this is the way things are; there’s no point thinking about how thing should be “(Zinn 3). We hear this ideas on our everyday life and we hear them from our parents, schools, churches and television, the bad thing is that most Americans …show more content…
Most people believe that experts see more clearly and think more intelligently than ordinary citizens, and that these experts have the same interest as ordinary citizens, want the same things and can be trusted to make decision for all of us, but they are all false assumptions. What they don't understand is that the decisions of our society are within the capacity of ordinary citizens. Citizens understand their own interest more clearly than any expert, and the mind of all human beings are more powerful together, it does not matter whether you are rich or poor, male or female, black or white. We are not starting from scratch. There is a long history in this country about different tragedies, but we could still change it.
The other essay that caught my attention in Howard Zinn’s book was “The Use and Abuse of History”. Zinn discusses how history is used and abused. Till this day our Society only tell us about “impartial history,” meaning that we leave parts of history out to make a certain group or certain event stick out. Most of the people understand the “common known facts and hitherto ignored facts.” (Zinn 51) but we need to try to discover the rest on our own, which