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Most Recent "Automotive" Articles
How to Decide if Selling, Trading or Donating a Car is the Best Financial Choice
Written by: Leona Arwine | Distributed: 2010-07-27 | Word Count: 600 | Page Views: 4238 | Votes: 4 | Rating: 0.25
The truth is, there is no universally right way to dispose of a used car. Decide which of the following statements best describes your situation for some specific advice on how to get rid of your used car.
What Are OEM Auto Parts? And Why Should They Be Considered?
Written by: Quinton Becker | Distributed: 2010-06-22 | Word Count: 698 | Page Views: 6874 | Votes: 26 | Rating: 1.81
Purchasing OEM auto parts is an excellent way of ensuring that the replacement parts you buy will fit your car. OEM auto parts are particularly important if you own a high-performance automobile...
Understanding the Maintenance, Repair and Replacement of Ball Joints
Written by: Quinton Becker | Distributed: 2010-06-15 | Word Count: 538 | Page Views: 32855 | Votes: 68 | Rating: 3.01
A ball joint is an important component of your car's suspension, located on the front end of the vehicle. Ball joints will wear out over time and cause handling problems as they continue to deteriorate. It is important that you have these joints inspected, particularly if you are experiencing handling problems with your vehicle.
The Three W's of Oxygen Sensors
Written by: Quinton Becker | Distributed: 2010-06-08 | Word Count: 658 | Page Views: 6385 | Votes: 14 | Rating: 1.36
Unless you are an automobile mechanic or work around car parts, you probably do not know anything about oxygen sensors. Of course, the name itself gives a pretty big clue, but still leaves a lot to the imagination. The fact is, oxygen sensors are very important to the overall function of a vehicle. The following are what could be referred to as the three W's of oxygen sensors:
Taking Care of Your Car's Braking System Can Prevent Accidents
Written by: Quinton Becker | Distributed: 2010-06-01 | Word Count: 616 | Page Views: 7849 | Votes: 25 | Rating: 1.68
A brake rotor is a vital part of the braking system on your vehicle. A brake rotor, in conjunction with brake pads, brings your car to come to a quick and complete stop. If you have a worn brake rotor, you should have it replaced as soon as possible for your own safety.
Performance Parts Can Help With Better Horsepower Or Gas Mileage
Written by: Quinton Becker | Distributed: 2010-05-25 | Word Count: 754 | Page Views: 6213 | Votes: 13 | Rating: 2.15
Performance parts are often better in quality than the factory replacement parts. The cost difference is generally minimal, and when you add in the fact that they outperform the factory replacement parts, it is really no contest.
Low-Riders, Street Racers and Everyday Drivers Should Be Aware of the Camber in a Car's Suspension System
Written by: Quinton Becker | Distributed: 2010-05-18 | Word Count: 721 | Page Views: 5967 | Votes: 13 | Rating: 2.15
The camber kit in your car's suspension system adjusts the angle of your tires, and increases the size of your tire footprint - how much of each tire comes into contact with the pavement. If you lower your car without installing a camber kit, there are some major handling problems that will arise. While street racers and low-rider buffs are the people who could use the camber kit most often, everyday drivers often consider it to be an economical safety improvement for their vehicles.
Don't Let Your Car's Alternator Leave You Stranded
Written by: Quinton Becker | Distributed: 2010-05-06 | Word Count: 630 | Page Views: 19829 | Votes: 51 | Rating: 2.98
An alternator is one of the most commonly dysfunctional auto parts. Without a properly functioning alternator, your car will simply refuse to run. A faulty alternator can leave you stranded, but luckily, a low-performing alternator often shows warning signs that indicate its malfunction before it ceases to work. Being able to recognize these warning signs, and knowing what to do next, may prevent you from getting caught in an inconvenient or dangerous situation.
Brush Guards Can Protect Cars and Trucks in Low-Impact Collisions
Written by: Quinton Becker | Distributed: 2010-04-29 | Word Count: 649 | Page Views: 9570 | Votes: 22 | Rating: 2.18
It may seem like an odd addition to a passenger car that is until you stop to realize that most police departments use them on their cars as well. Brush guards protect cars and trucks from minor damages that might otherwise be sustained in a low-impact collision with a vehicle or a tree.
Brake Pads Are An Essential Element of Your Car's Safety Equipment
Written by: Quinton Becker | Distributed: 2010-04-20 | Word Count: 626 | Page Views: 5850 | Votes: 21 | Rating: 2.33
Brake pads are an integral element of the braking system in a car. As you use your brakes in everyday driving, you will slowly wear down, and, eventually, need to replace the brake pads. Taking good care of your braking system will ensure the safety of you and your family as you drive.


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All F'd Up parts are fully functional but cosmetically blemished
during the machining process or after anodize. All sales are final on
F'd Up parts.
These are old new stock we found in the warehouse with slight cosmetic blemishes. Get them while you can!
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AR-15 Switch Rail Instructions

subset: commoncrawl


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Airblaster Hoodless Ninja Suit 2022
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Hope College has announced three winners in the 24th annual Howard Plaggemars Essay/Poetry Competition, held for students enrolled in the 2005 Vienna Summer School.
All entries responded to some aspect of each student's experiences in Europe this past summer under the guidance of Dr. Stephen I. Hemenway, who has been director of the program for the past 30 years and is a professor of English at Hope. Howard Plaggemars of Holland, donor of the prizes, is a 1960 and 1961 alumnus of the Vienna Summer School.
Two students tied for the first-place award. Elizabeth Brichacek, a senior from Carol Stream, Ill., who is pursuing a double major in French and exercise science, won for her essay, "My Viennese 4th of July." Jessica Schmidt, a senior English and German major from Portage, won for her essay, "Lost." Both Brichacek and Schmidt received $75.
The third-place winner is senior Ashley Anne Boer of Modesto, Calif. A major in studio art and creative writing, she was honored for her poem "sugar cubes patient on the porcelain saucer."
This year's judges, who are all previous winners of the Plaggemars Essay/Poetry Competition, were Tom Bamborough, Christopher "McG" McGarvey and Dr. Elizabeth Trembley. Bamborough, a 1983 Hope graduate, is the principal of Bamborough Print Communication in Ada. McGarvey, a 2005 Hope graduate, is currently spending a year doing volunteer work for Emmaus Ministries in Chicago, Ill. Trembley, a 1985 Hope graduate, is an associate professor of English and director of the FOCUS and SOAR programs at Hope, and a writer of scholarly works and popular fiction.
Consisting of two three-week sessions, the Vienna Summer School offers students a choice of work in art history, communication, economics, Austrian history, music history, German and Austrian literature, Eastern European literature and a Senior Seminar, all taught in English, as well as courses in the German language, taught in German. Students are housed with Austrian families, and are free to plan their leisure time and take weekend excursions led by Hemenway to places like Salzburg, Venice, Budapest, Prague and the Austrian Alps.


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At Monday's Albemarle County Architectural Review Board meeting, members approved the design for a Fresh Market specialty grocery store that will occupy the old Circuit City building in the Albemarle Square shopping center on U.S. 29.
The Fresh Market will feature outdoor seating and a design that mimics a farmer's market. Board members said they were pleased with the developer's latest plans to add another set of windows to the front of the building.
"You have done a fantastic job and … if you can do anything to make these windows happen … we would certainly be pleased with it," said board member Paul Wright.
"Compositionally, it is nicer," board member John Quale said.
Members called attention to the fact that the windows would only be a positive addition if they did not feature spandrel glass, which gives a uniform appearance in building walls.
"Spandrel glass on the entrance corridor is discouraged," said ARB chairman Fred Missel.
The board also held a work session to discuss Albemarle County's requirement for relegated parking along entrance corridors that keeps parking lots out of view. Staff emphasized the importance of maintaining the ability to convert complexes along entrance corridors into walkable areas for the future.
"We've got to set things up for a 'now' and a 'later' so that you have that place where people … have the right place to walk, and the right place to walk is not right up on the road with the moving traffic. It's pushed back," said Elaine Echols, principal planner for Albemarle County.
This presentation led the board to discuss other problems they are facing with Albemarle County's so called "neighborhood model" form of development when it occurs in entrance corridors such as U.S. Routes 29 and 250.
Bruce Wardell stated that these developments often create interior, privatized fronts to businesses with the backs of the buildings facing the main road.
"The unintended consequence of the neighborhood model, as it is being applied [on Route 29 and 250], is creating a scenario that is exactly the opposite of what everyone envisioned," Wardell said. "Everyone envisioned enlivening the public sector of those sites. What in fact has happened is all [activity] has been thrown on the [interior side] of those buildings."
In other business, the board approved plans for updating the Staples store sign in Shoppers World. BCT Architects has redesigned the shopping center to modernize its appearance.
"[Staples] is using this opportunity to bring their branding to the center using the signage," said Christine McGuirl, development manager for Federal Realty Investment Trust.
Staples, a long-term tenant of the shopping center, was asked to reduce the size of its new sign and change the design so that it matched the signs of other tenants in Shoppers World.
When the renovation of the shopping center is completed, it will be home to several new stores, including Stein Mart, which will open by the end of the year, a Jason's Deli and another tenant who has not yet been confirmed.


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By Leslie Meredith
It's a small Web after all. As the six-degrees of separation notion says that any two people are only six introductions away from one another, researchers claim that any two Web pages are no more than 19 clicks apart.
The Royal Society, a scientific organization established in 1660, this week published a paper that has found a similar model works for the Web as well as it does for people. Despite the billions of pages on the Web , you can get from one page to any other in about 19 clicks, according to Albert-László Barabási, a networking theorist in the U.K. and member of the Society.
Barabási used network science to model the Web, finding it to be a "small world" of about a trillion documents connected by relatively short paths.
The connectedness of pages mirrors the connections between people. Whether you're looking at a small town in Texas or the entire world, a minimal number of connections is required to link one individual with another. Similarly, Barabási found that the distribution of connections throughout the Web looks pretty much the same whether you're looking at a small section or the entire thing. Even if a majority of the pages were removed, some path from one page to any other is still likely to exist, he said.
But not all pages have an equal number of connections. Just like people, some pages are better connected than others. And here's the crucial difference: If several leaders in your town were to disappear, others would step into their shoes and town life would go on.
However, removing a relatively small number of the more highly connected Web pages would lead to the "disintegration of the network," Barabási said. Crucial connections could be broken, cutting off vast sections of the Web.
- 9 Tips to Stay Safe on Public Wi-Fi
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Copyright 2013 TechNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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After being played the last two years on the SMU campus, the Armed Forces Bowl is returning to Fort Worth. The stadium on the TCU has undergone a $164 million rebuild since the bowl, which debuted in 2003, was last played there in 2009.
"They do such a super job of creating different opportunities and experiences for your guys that it actually seems like quite a while since we have been there," Air Force coach Troy Calhoun said. "So we are excited. Great food; great, great hospitality and I look forward to playing in a terrific venue with the upgrades that have been made there too."
Air Force accepted an invitation to return to Fort Worth right after getting its sixth victory, a 21-7 win over Hawaii on Nov. 16. It is their school-record sixth consecutive season with a bowl game.
The only team other than Air Force and three-time participant Houston with multiple Armed Force Bowl appearances is Tulsa with two. Rice is in the bowl for the first time.
The Falcons lost to California in 2007, then split consecutive matchups against Houston, losing in 2008 before a 47-20 win in 2009. Both losses were by six points.
Rice got its spot in the Armed Forces Bowl when Tulsa won the Conference USA championship game on Saturday, sending the Golden Hurricane to the Liberty Bowl as the league's representative. That put the Owls in Fort Worth instead of the New Orleans Bowl.
The Owls have a four-game winning streak, averaging 41 points a game in that stretch, and won five of their last six games. This is their third bowl game since a postseason drought from 1961 to 2006.
"We were a good football team. We were competitive in every game," coach David Bailiff said. "Very resilient group of young men that showed up, even when we back ourselves into the corner and knew we had to win out to become bowl eligible."
Hatfield's first head coaching job was at Air Force from 1979-83, and he won bowl games each of his last two seasons. He then went to Arkansas and Clemson, then was at Rice from 1994-2005.
Bailiff was asked who was going to win to have Hatfield as an honorary coach.
"We want him to be there and it wouldn't even matter really what sideline he's on," the current Rice coach said. "He's just one of the greatest guys that's ever been in the business, and you know, we are just hopeful that he can come to the game."
Calhoun had similar flattering things to say about Hatfield, and credited him with doing "an awful lot to rejuvenate" the Air Force program with those two bowl victories three decades ago.
Before taking over in 2007 as head coach at Air Force, where he was a quarterback and started his coaching career in the late 1980s, Calhoun was offensive coordinator for one season with the NFL's Texans in Houston -- home of Rice.


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It's never easy trying to make a successful movie remake, but that hasn't stopped Hollywood from cranking them out. Director Jose Padhila takes on the 1987 classic "RoboCop," which starred Peter Weller as a fresh-faced street cop gunned down on his first day of duty, only to be resurrected as a fearsome human-machine hybrid created to clean up the streets of Detroit.
READ: 10 Actors of Color We'd Love To See In "Star Wars Episode VII"
In this update, Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is a "Dirty Harry" type police detective who messes with the wrong crime boss, Antoine Vallon (Patrick Garrow). When Vallon strikes back, leaving Murphy at death's door, OmniCorp CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) finds his perfect guinea pig for a new type of law enforcement.
RELATED: Samuel L. Jackson Steals The Show In "RoboCop"
While this remake certainly benefits from the bells and whistles of CGI (that black suit is the business!), ultimately "RoboCop" fails to live up to its predecessor. Here are three reasons why this RoboCop 2.0 will never find a place in the sci-fi hall of fame:
1. Joel Kinnaman
While Kinnaman is undoubtedly easy on the eyes, his performance barely had a pulse. What made Weller's RoboCop so compelling was his evolution from an idealistic police officer to bad ass crime fighter. His transition from man to machine was informed with specific body movements and vocal intonations, whereas Kinnaman's interpretation remained flat throughout. The magic to "RoboCop" was the audience taking an emotional journey with Alex Murphy, as he painfully reconciled his humanity within his cybernetic body. Kinnaman unfortunately fails to take us to the promised land. I mean, if you can't even deliver the classic line "Dead or alive, you're coming with me" with any conviction, you're simply not worthy of carrying on the "RoboCop" legacy.
2. The Villains
What was so delicious about the original "RoboCop" were the levels of douchery displayed by both the corporate "suits" and the lower level street "thugs." The clash between older OCP exec Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) and his younger, opportunistic counterpart Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) made for some great scenery chewing. Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his gang of not so merry men were absolutely ruthless, as witnessed by their use of Murphy for target practice. In this 2014 update, Michael Keaton brings a certain charisma as a capitalist magnate, but his villainry (as well as Antoine Vallon's) is dialed down to almost zero, making his final confrontation against Robocop that much more anti-climactic.
3. That PG-13 Rating
What was brilliant about the the original "RoboCop" was its depiction of a dystopian future that eerily mirrored today's society. The graphic violence served two purposes; first to justify the drastic measures taken in building this modern-day techno-Frankenstein and to provide a an emotional catharsis to the audience when Murphy finally exacts his revenge. This sanitized update doesn't give viewers a sense of urgency for the RoboCop program, but more a not so hidden agenda to promote (or debate) the U.S. use of drone strikes in the Middle East. While that's definitely a debate worth having, "RoboCop" just isn't smart enough to tackle such a controversial topic.
ReBecca Theodore-Vachon is the Film/TV Editor for TheUrbanDaily.com and contributor to RogerEbert.com. You can find her on Twitter: @FilmFatale_NYC
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First I sanded with this little guy from Harbor Freight using 80 grit sandpaper. You only have to sand it enough where you get the shine off.
See how I rolled...the parts uncovered were sprayed with the can. And I even laid out some old sheets to protect the carpet. Painting revelations people.
I also found this awesome mirror during my Goodwill trip. That's why we needed two cars. My poor neighbor saw my mom and I trying to bring this all in the house and offered to help out. I am sure my neighbors think I am crazy. Cute house. But crazy.
Once primed, I sanded until all flat surfaces were smooth to the touch.
I then painted all the pieces in Behr Ultra Pure White paint with primer. I now buy all my paint with primer...and no longer at Walmart. I will take any extra help I can get from my paint.
After two coats of paint I finished everything off with Deft Clear Wood Finish. It is important to finish off white painted furniture with something that will not yellow. There were a few places where it was a bit goopy and it did turn yellow. So make sure to use thin coats.
And ten million years later {that's about how long it seemed}...but really it was about a week later...I had these beauties:
The inside of the hutch was painted with Valspar Distant Valley. It is less minty in person.
And that is how you paint furniture the correct way. I spent many hours trying to figure out what was best for getting my furniture to withstand the long haul and it was well worth it. There is a definite difference in how much more quality these pieces appear compared to previous furniture that I simply painted. From now on I will do things correctly. Pinky promise.
And I sold my old hutch on Craigslist for $100. I originally bought it for $20 and selling it paid for my two new pieces. Win win. I was a little sad to see it go but I have decided to go with a more neutral theme and plus I like the bones of this new hutch so much more. Full dining room updates soon!


text: Space | 01. October 2019 | posted by Clemens Plank SOFIA explores Europe's night sky Image: DLR (CC-BY 3.0) Star guests – SOFIA will appear on 'Sendung mit der Maus' ('Show with the mouse') on 6 October. At last, the airborne observatory SOFIA has returned to Germany! In the early hours of the morning on 16 September, the research aircraft landed safely at Stuttgart airport and was visited by about 2000 astronomy and aircraft enthusiasts over the following two days. On the third day, it took to the skies for its first scientific flight over Europe.##markend## It is in the DNA of the SOFIA team to attempt the impossible and push the boundaries of scientific exploration. During this research flight over Europe, we conquered new horizons while respecting the territorial borders that crisscross the continent. Image: DLR Georg Mitscher, the first DLR pilot to visit the SOFIA flight deck during a mission. These intricate, international borders are the main reason why SOFIA had not attempted a scientific flight within Europe until now. While the Schengen Agreement guarantees almost unlimited freedom for travellers on the ground, the situation in the air is more complicated. This is especially the case when you are registered as a state aircraft of the USA, have a NASA airworthiness certification, and cannot fly on standard air routes – all of which have caused confusion for some national Air Traffic Control (ATC) authorities in Europe. In addition to coordinating all national, regional, oceanic and military ATC organisations, we had to obtain diplomatic clearance from every country on our planned flightpath, or within 20 nautical miles to either side of it. We also had to consider possible deviations from our original flight plan caused by unpredictable winds. Image: DLR (CC-BY 3.0) The flight plan FANNIE. Every SOFIA flight is not only numbered, but also given a name. The flight number is incremented chronologically for each departure. However, the flight name refers to the flight plan. During the early planning stages, European airspace regulations felt like one of the primary objects we wanted to observe on the flight – a black hole. But the European ATC organisations offered excellent support, shining a light on the logistical darkness with their information. However, despite our best preparations, plans for SOFIA's first scientific flight over Europe came close to collapse. Unusually strong southerly winds meant we had to move our planned flight route 80 nautical miles to the north just two days before take-off. This new route led us through Irish airspace, for which we had no diplomatic overflight permit. To avoid this, the flight planners had to make additional changes to the flight plan – resulting in less time for scientific observations. Then, on the morning of the flight, just as everything appeared to be coming together, we received a message warning us about the activation of a military 'Danger Area' on our planned route. Could the flight be rescheduled at short notice, with further reductions to the time available for scientific observations? Or, had our fears come true? Was it really impossible to plan a successful scientific flight for SOFIA in Europe? Image: Marco Veit A special sight at Stuttgart Airport: SOFIA opens the telescope door and shows the telescope mirror below. The crew briefing was due to take place at 17:00. If we could not find a solution by then, the flight would have to be cancelled. But, to our relief, at 15:00, a solution appeared. For SOFIA, the 'Danger Area' was reduced to altitudes below 36,000 feet. We could not go around the problem, but we could easily fly over it at 41,000 feet. Pride and happines were in the air. We were very delighted about the capabilities and cooperation of all involved European ATC and military authorities. But another setback was yet to come. Immediately after take-off, the radio in the flight deck buzzed with chatter from the air traffic controllers responsible for the upper airspace in southern Germany. Our flight plan, which we had coordinated weeks beforehand, and which had been approved that same day, was completely unknown to them. Was all our preparation in vain? Would we have the same problem each time we handed over to the next air traffic control cell? Fortunately, that was not the case. From France onwards, the ATC coordination ran like clockwork – at times, better than in the USA, where continuous night landings at airports mean the night sky can be much more crowded. The peace and quiet in the cockpit even allowed guests on board SOFIA to visit the pilots, who were more than happy to answer their questions. Image: NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook SOFIA targets the surroundings of black holes: This artistic representation shows the galaxy Cygnus A, which was examined with the high-resolution infrared camera HAWC+ on board SOFIA during a flight over Southern California. Smooth interactions between all the aviation partners involved made it possible to get to the right place at the right time to observe the black hole Mrk 231 during the night of Wednesday 18 September. Our scientists will now analyse the great data we collected, together with those collected from the black hole at the centre of another galaxy, Cygnus A, earlier this year. At the end of the long, tense day came a long, successful night of astronomy. Our guests were happy to have been a part of a unique SOFIA flight and our scientists were happy with the great quality of the observations made from the skies above Europe. Our pilots were happy too, having worked with the various European ATC organisations and landed safely back in Stuttgart.


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The Left's Blind SpotHistorians/History
tags: Howard Zinn
Let's start with Howard Zinn and then move on.
Zinn, rather unlikely for a historian, has been feted like a Hollywood celebrity, receiving encomiums from stars like Danny Glover, James Earl Jones, and of course, Matt Damon, whose character in Good Will Hunting famously brandishes a copy of Zinn's A People's History of the United States during a raucus encounter with Robin Williams. In 2003 a large crowd turned out at a celebration in Manhattan at the 92nd Street Y to mark the sale of the one millionth copy of the book. Recently, there was even a television series built around the book's themes.
Why is Zinn so popular (with the general public, if not with historians, many of whom have expressed reservations about his books)? The answer is that Zinn plays the role in a self-satisfied often-uncritical mainstream culture of the seemingly attractive dangerous rebel. "If you want to read a real history book, read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States," Damon exclaims in the movie. "That book will knock you on your ass."
But just how dangerous is Zinn? Like many left-wingers he regularly calls attention to a long list of crimes American officials have committed against various groups and countries while celebrating the virtues of ordinary folks. But what he doesn't do is admit the obvious: that the ordinary people he is so eager to lionize have often turned a blind eye to what their government's leaders through the years have done in their name.
That the people's responsibility for our foreign policy choices is seldom mentioned is strange. For many years now it has been a staple of the left-wing approach to history to draw attention to the people operating at the grassroots. History faculties, dominated by liberals at most schools, now include few professors who even care to do research into the papers of political leaders. The fashion instead is to do social and cultural history where the emphasis is on the masses. And yet in the context of foreign policy debates public opinion is relegated to the shadows, as if it were almost irrelevant.
Flip open A People's History almost anywhere and what you are likely to find is a relentless focus, in all cases where the United States acted badly in Zinn's view, on our leaders. Consulting the index, I looked up Iran, which figures prominently in left-wing indictments of America. There on page 430 is the story of the CIA's coup against Mossadegh: "In Iran, in 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency succeeded in overthrowing a government which nationalized the oil industry." On this same page there are attacks on the Marshall Plan, criticisms of the invasions of Latin America, and even a denunciation of the Alliance for Progress. It is the standard left-wing laundry list of postwar American crimes, follies and hypocrisies:
● The Marshall Plan comes in for criticism because its real purpose allegedly was to help create markets for the benefit of our corporations. As Secretary of State Dean Acheson stated, in what Zinn supposes is an admission of rank venality, "These measures of relief and reconstruction have been only in part suggested by humanitarianism. Your Congress has authorized and your Government is carrying out, a policy of relief and reconstruction today chiefly as a matter of national self-interest."
● The Alliance for Progress, JFK's program to promote social reform in Latin America, is lambasted because "it turned out to be mostly military aid to keep in power right-wing dictatorships and enable them to stave off revolutions."
● Our support for the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 is castigated as a plot to replace an elected government -- the "most democratic Guatemala had ever known" -- with a military junta on behalf of United Fruit. (Arbenz had expropriated 234,000 acres of the company's land.)
● Our dispatch of thousands of troops to Lebanon in 1958 was designed "to make sure the pro-American government there was not toppled by a revolution." We also wanted to "keep an armed presence in that oil-rich area."
● Finally, there is our support for the Cuban dictator Batista and our attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro.
Zinn's chief theme in the book's chapters on foreign affairs is that the United States has played the role of a bully on the world stage and has frequently done so at the behest of our corporations. Our leaders' idealistic talk? So much claptrap. Dig a little, Zinn recommends, and what you find is that these leaders approved nefarious policies at odds with basic assumptions about America's stated commitment to human rights.
Our concern here is not with the content of Zinn's indictment. He may be right or he may be wrong. (I think he is right in some cases and dead wrong in others.) The concern at hand is rather with what he has not said than with what he has. And what he has not said is that the American people are associated with the policies to which he objects.
Indeed, it is the peculiar practice of Zinn to put The People front and center in his narrative only when they are doing good as he defines good. When The People are doing bad things -- as when they are allowing their leaders to adopt unsavory foreign policies -- they are largely invisible. The narrative subtext that runs throughout his book can be summed up this way. Leaders bad, ordinary people good. Or rather, white leaders bad, ordinary people good.
Not that The People are infallible. But in Zinn's accounts he hastens always to indicate that their mistakes are owing to their manipulation by elites. In the notorious case of Vietnam, for example, he notes that LBJ "used a murky set of events in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of North Vietnam, to launch full-scale war." That ordinary people allowed themselves to be bamboozled by the president doesn't occur to Zinn. I do not mean to suggest that ordinary people should have been able to pierce through LBJ's lies -- and they were lies, as we now know -- about the events that transpired in the Tonkin Gulf. But their attitude was passive. Whatever the president said they believed. This was not LBJ's fault. This was their fault.
In Zinn's narrative of the Vietnam War ordinary people do eventually surface as noble actors in a movement of popular resistance. "Early in the war," he writes,
there had been two separate incidents, barely noticed by most Americans. On November 2, 1965, in front of the Pentagon in Washington, as thousands of employees were streaming out of the building in the late afternoon, Norman Morrison, a thirty-two year old pacifist, father of three, stood below the third-floor window of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, doused himself with kerosene, and set himself afire, giving up his life in protest against the war. Also that year, in Detroit, an eighty-two-year-old woman named Alice Herz burned herself to death to make a statement against the horror of Indochina.
A "remarkable change" then took place, says Zinn.
In early 1965, when the bombing of North Vietnam began, a hundred people gathered on the Boston Common to voice their indignation. On October 15, 1969, the number of people assembled on the Boston Common to protest the war was 100,000. Perhaps 2 million people across the nation gathered that day in towns and villages that had never seen an antiwar meeting.
Zinn's purpose is to correct the imbalance he sees in other books which neglect the activities of The People altogether. And to this extent his book is useful. It opens one's eyes to a largely -- or once largely -- neglected aspect of history. But it leaves its readers unprepared. Framing history as a battle between malevolent elites and darling ordinary people is too limiting. History encompasses a broader range. There is about Zinn's approach a kind of arch determinism that finds in the messy details of history a pattern of great simplicity. On its face this is suspect.
More to the point of this chapter, Zinn's approach is self-contradictory. Many of the people who serve in top government posts have themselves emerged from the masses. When in their evolution should we therefore begin to say that they have made the transition from a blessed state of innocence to the ranks of the damned? Take Lincoln. In his years as a callow youth and unimportant political figure he fits Zinn's ideal, one supposes. As a young soldier in a state militia he whiles away the time fighting a losing battle with mosquitoes, apparently indifferent to medals and the lure of military valor. Later in his single term in Congress he opposes President Polk's war of aggression in Mexico. But he is already on the road to compromise with power. Unlike, says Zinn, the fiery Ohio antislavery orator, Congressman Joshua Giddings, Lincoln decides "he would not try to end the war by stopping funds for men and supplies." By the time Lincoln is elected president he has become a sell-out: The war is not between two peoples, northerners versus southerners as most books declare. It is a war between elites. "The northern elite wanted economic expansion -- free land, free labor, a free market, a high protective tariff for manufacturers, a bank of the United States. The slave interests opposed all that." Lincoln is the chosen representative of the northern elite. At first, he refuses even to commit the country to the abolition of slavery. But then "casualties mounted, desperation to win heightened, and the criticism of the abolitionists threatened to unravel the tattered [Republican] coalition." Lincoln, in response to the pressure, finally moves left and commits the country to a policy of emancipation. Zinn quotes Wendell Phillips, who said that if Lincoln was able to grow as president "it is because we have watered him."
One would think that readers would see through Zinn's approach. But the book keeps selling like hotcakes. But why is it the object of such affection? One reason is that we have a soft spot in our hearts as Americans for the thirties and Zinn's book is very much a product of the thirties. Reading his book is like stepping into a Frank Capra movie where The People battle the Bosses for control of Small Town USA. If his book were a painting it would look like those magnificent murals from the thirties that adorn the ceiling of the lobby of Rockefeller Center, the ones depicting Heroic Working People Confronting the Forces of Nature and Capitalism. But the chief reason his book sells -- and I say this in the full knowledge that my observation will be greeted with some astonishment -- is because Howard Zinn, self-described radical, has tapped into the hoary myth that suffuses The People in an almost divine burst of sunlight. That is, Zinn, the debunker of American myths, appeals not despite the classic American myth that underlies his approach, but because of it. Try as he does to escape from American assumptions to present something fresh he is actually beholden to one of the oldest assumptions there is.
Lest it be thought that I am picking on Mr. Zinn, let me hasten to add that the list of left-wingers who share his rosy assumption about The People is long and distinguished. It includes many writers and scholars whose work I have been privileged to publish at the History News Network. But rather than get into the business of naming names, I prefer to broaden the indictment. Our problem is not that certain left-wing writers have let the public off the hook, it is that left-wing readers have. The writers can write what they will. The trouble is that their readers have not called into question the assumptions the writers have been making.
Take as an example one of the familiar arguments made during the debate about the Iraq War. It was summed up by a handy photograph that surfaced on the eve of the war and was quickly distributed widely. The picture showed Saddam Hussein, Iraqi dictator, shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld, when he was serving as an American envoy of President Reagan in the early 1980s. The Left loved the photograph. Here was powerful visual evidence of the complicated and hypocritical history of the United States in Iraq. Contrary to President George W. Bush's assertion that Saddam was a wily dictator so heinous we had to drop bombs on him, the picture suggested that he was a man with whom we could do business, as the diplomats say. But left-wingers failed to extend the argument as they properly should have to include the responsibility of ordinary Americans for our friendship with Saddam. It is the absence of an argument then that is at issue rather than the argument that was made. To be sure Rumsfeld was a hypocrite, shamelessly capable of pirouetting from support to hostility in an instant, as circumstances dictated, without regard to questions of morality. But was not the American public's shameless switch also of interest? It is a peculiarity of our culture and the inadequacy of the Left's approach that we could acknowledge Rumsfeld's hypocrisy but not our own.
The failure is not universal. In "A Problem from Hell": America in the Age of Genocide, which appeared in 2002, the sympathetic, intelligent and articulate leftist Samantha Power clearly writes of the American public's complicity or at the least indifference to Saddam's many crimes against humanity. By the end of her book it seems almost incredible that Americans have greeted revelations of genocide with apathy. Recounting the story of the 1988 gassing of the Kurds at Halabja, which President Bush used as Exhibit A in his indictment of Saddam's evil rule, Power movingly shows how our indifference cost lives:
"It was different from the other bombs," one witness remembered. "There was a huge sound, a huge flame and it had very destructive ability. If you touched one part of your body that had been burned, your hand burned also. It caused things to catch fire."
The official reaction of the American government at the time was embarrassingly weak. First the government downplayed the reports of the attack attributing them to suspect Iranian accounts. Then when the evidence mounted and became undeniable official spokespersons like Marlin Fitzwater denounced Saddam's use of gas but not the attack itself. As Power observes, "The United States issued no threats or demands." Furthermore, a State Department spokesman muddied the waters by suggesting that both Iran and Iraq had possibly used gas.
This terrible record cast a shadow over the leadership of the American government and obviously is further evidence of the hypocrisy of leaders like Rumsfeld. But it also suggests that Americans themselves were uninterested in the attack. The broad outline of what happened in Halabja was known. Our response as a country to the news of the attack was known. But by choice, both our leaders and our people preferred to respond -- maybe this is too harsh -- with a yawn.
Power herself indicts the public along with its leaders for their insouciance. She claims convincingly that the public responded apathetically time and again in the twentieth century to the most horrendous reports of man's inhumanity to man, beginning with the Armenian Genocide, the century's first. But if that is the case why did leftists reviewing the volume not focus their ire on public opinion? Why did the New York Times book review, written by an editor at the liberal American Prospect, carry the headline, "Turning a Blind Eye/A human rights expert surveys a century of American policy toward mass killings," as if the problem were with our leaders' policy and not ourselves, and then devote not a single sentence out of 1,341 words to the question of the American public's culpability?
Curious to see if the Times's review was representative, I checked the website of The Nation, the country's leading left-wing publication, for comparison. In its 4,000 word review the public's responsibility is alluded to just once. Admittedly it is easier to indict specific policymakers than it is to survey the response -- or non-response, as it were -- of the general public. But the conclusion I drew and I do not think it is an unreasonable one is that the Left is bored with the theme of democratic weakness. The public's indifference is now so taken for granted on the Left that few seize the opportunity to comment on it.
The result is that all sorts of rather incomplete statements parading as serious arguments have been advanced and accepted. The arguments are not so much wrong as they are inadequate, the propounders of the arguments unwilling to follow their premises to their logical conclusion, as if they were traveling along a speedy highway and suddenly decided to draw to a dead stop even though they had yet to reach their destination. Where they were going had seemed plain enough. But why on earth they had ceased to go forward no one bothers to say.
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Jim Miller - 8/28/2008
I'm watching a program on the History Channel right now about the US Presidents. http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail&episodeId=173113
Regarding Clinton and his impeachment, the synopsis did not mention that he was impeached for purjury, but it did go on to suggest that as a result of The People being interested in Bill Clinton's sex life that Osama bin Laden was allowed to rise to power. A similar type of allegation was hinted at in the movie "Blood Diamond", in which the impeachment of President Clinton was "put in perspective" by one of the protagonists pointing out that everybody in America is more interested in Clinton's sex life than they are in mass murder.
The message that can be gleaned from this sort of stuff is that when a Democrat is caught doing something stupid it is "The People" who are being irresponsible by directing their attention toward what liberal pundits deem trivial.
Rodney Huff - 6/11/2008
Back to Zinn: I think if Zinn had a romantic view of the people, he wouldn't feel compelled to put the people on alert with his books. A romanticized people, I would think, would already be on alert. And they certainly wouldn't have listened to Bush when shortly after 9/11 he said, Go back to what you were doing, people. "Go shopping!" (Unspoken text: Don't try to figure out how and why this happened. Go back to sleep, children.)
Unfortunately, I think most people did listen. Zinn understands this. He sees the weaknesses and potential in people, so he keeps writing and speaking and prodding people to be more responsible, politically engaged citizens.
Rodney Huff - 6/11/2008
Recently, Obama was lambasted for trying to tell the truth when he talked about how people without jobs in rural Pennsylvania felt "bitter"; and how, in times of stress and economic uncertainty, people often cling to their Bibles and guns - they fall back on consoling traditions, what's familiar to them.
The criticism Obama received for his remarks, a lot of which issued from Hillary's camp, was that his comments indicated a paternalist and elitist point of view - they smacked of an unrefined Marxism implicit in the idea of "false consciousness."
But it was the truth, and Obama insisted that everyone knew it was true. It's just that no one wants to admit (especially the corporate elite) the extent to which power can be used to shape people's perceptions and opinions through control and management of the downward flow of information. (No one wants to admit that Marx was on to something when he said that the ideas of the ruling class are also the ruling ideas.)
However, I don't think there's anything paternalistic in observing how people can be misled to align against their own interests. Making this observation is dangerous to those who benefit from keeping the people (the consumers of information) in the dark about how they would be manipulated. So anyone who attempts to blow the lid off this "effect of power" (i.e., Gramsci's "hegemony") is likely to set off a firestorm of indignation.
Obama tried to raise the level of discussion above stupid, and the media and his political opponents pounced on him. He was guilty of violating the established framework of debate and, for his crime, was portrayed as elitist and "out of touch." Conservatives have so successfully framed the debate that they preclude any honest discussion of power and of how, as Steven Lukes put it, power is at its most effective when it is least observable.
For instance, how likely is it to be in the working class's "real interests" to prevent gay couples from getting married when their jobs are being outsourced as a result of free trade agreements that benefit only the corporate elite?
Q: Why isn't the trade agreement Bill Clinton signed with China, an agreement that sent many US manufacturing jobs overseas, a major issue?
A: The corporate media pays little, if any, attention to such issues. Instead, it focuses people's attention on "safer" issues - issues that are not likely to challenge corporate power and those that are more likely to divide the underlying population into a powerless, fragmented mass. Thus, the people's attention gets diverted from public issues that affect everyone to less important issues like gay marriage. I highly doubt that the lives of the people opposed to gay marriage would change much at all if gay marriage were suddenly made legal in every state. On the other hand, free trade agreements that touch the lives of all Americans, gay and straight, hardly get mentioned in the mainstream media.
And let's not forget about the prevalence of info-tainment - the endless stream of celebrity gossip and trivial sideshows that get paraded as news. These are the oldest tricks in the power playbook: distract, divide, and conquer.
This is all old news on the Left, but we hardly ever hear politicians talk about this. Why not? Well, maybe our so-called Representatives have corporate masters they answer to before they even think about We the People. Maybe, if pressed on the issue, Obama can tell us how things really work in Washington.
Rodney Huff - 6/11/2008
Hi Rick,
That's a good question. I'm not sure why. Maybe they were afraid to tell the truth about the divide and conquer tactics used by their conservative adversaries, fearing that they'd be labeled elitist or condescending or worse—communists.
No doubt there was resistance to conservative attempts to redefine issues and dictate the terms of debate, but I think most of this resistance both during and after the Sixties was confined to academia and grassroots organizations, while many lefty politicians simply sold out or acquiesced to the Right to remain competitive. Regardless, no one on the Left seemed able to come up with a response that was both compelling and politically palatable.
Hi Rodney,
I want top make just one point in response to your lengthy and stimulating response.
If Zinn and other leftists aren't romantics, why then were they so caught off guard by the reaction of white working class folks to the changes in the Sixties? It took the left a couple of decades to realize how Nixon and Reagan were beating them by exploiting racism, homophobia, etc. It took third-way Bill Clinton to find a way back in to power.
Maarja Krusten - 6/7/2008
Rick, I haven't read your book (although I did see it in the local Barnes and Noble about a week ago). I have read your blog postings and front page essays about it.
I found very interesting your point in this essay about Lincoln.
Do you the Internet age will erode romanticism about the People of the type that you describe? It certainly provides gathering places for very diverse individuals. Here on HNN, of the nonacademic individuals who once posted here, Dave Livingston and Peter Clarke both could be said to represent the People. (Neither was a government official or, as far as I can tell, a member of a leadership "elite." I don't think I ever figured out what line of work Clarke was in or had been in.)
That is one of the reasons that I never use the term the People. The two people I just mentioned (neither of whom appear to post here any longer) were very different in ideology, perspective, style of discourse and news sources to which they turned. They shared so few common characteristics, I would be hard pressed to put them in the same group anywhere, except as U.S. citizens. Having gotten glimpses into how they thought, I doubt anyone would reduce them to The People. I wouldn't. I suspect academics who study such forums in the future won't either. So in that sense, here on HNN, you're providing a valuable service by providing a small town square (I wish it attracted more comments – and more interaction among people -- than it does)..
Isn't part of the value of Internet forums the glimpses it gives into the thinking of people who in the old days would not have left many archival records behind? Yes, some citizens might have written to public figures in the past. As Jeremy Young noted this week in his blog, Rick Perlstein points to what he learned about the election of 1966 in Illinois by examining public opinion mail at the Chicago History Museum.
Yes, the blogosphere has pockets where like minded people gather to reinforce each others' beliefs. There are plenty of echo chamber sites -- or ones which don't tolerate much variance in accepted behavior or opinion -- on the Web. But there also are community square type sites -- including online newspapers which permit reader comments -- where people with very diverse perspectives gather to post their views. There's an awful lot of data being produced about how citizens view issues, albeit by a self selecting sample. (On some sites, it seems it is the angriest people who are most prone to post.) Perhaps some of it is being archived for future researchers to study.
BTW, I notice that one of the people who posted on the Salon site about the review of your book mentioned Myers Briggs Type Indicators and what they reveal about approaches to decision making and so forth. The person posting there discusses intuitive and sensing approaches, etc. As I've noted here previously, MBTI is very useful in the insights it provides into the various ways that people process information and use it to come to conclusions.
Based on how rarely I see historians mention it, I would guess that people in the business world or in government are more likely to be familiar with MBTI (or to use it) than academics. While MBTI is not perfect, and there is room to debate its value, it is useful for understanding that there are differences in how people communicate, gather data, etc. Some people are readers, others are drawn to oral presentations. That helps in workplace situations where you have to manage people or work with task teams and so forth. It's a useful tool which helps guard against stereotyping people.
Jonathan Rauch explains one MBTI characteristic, introversion, in a well known Internet posted essay, "Caring for Your Introvert." See
It provides some insights into why some introverts enjoy reading and also mentions a few Presidents.
Lawrence Brooks Hughes - 6/6/2008
Thank you for confirming that JFK started the war. A fact is a fact, indeed.
I would quarrel a bit with your next statement, however, because I remember people were highly critical of LBJ because he DID NOT launch a FULL-SCALE war in Vietnam, (ever, if you conisder the lack of nukes), but instead procrastinated and tried to measure every bombing strike, and got personally involved in limiting military actions, and thus escalated only gradually.
In time, he certainly escalated the troop numbers from 17,000 to something like 535,000, but I believe he did so in no small part to continue Kennedy's policy... Also, he was terrified of being bullied off the playground and looking cowardly--which would not have been the case if JFK had never launched the first 17,000.
There is no telling whether Johnson would have sent 535,000 troops if he hadn't found 17,000 there when he came to power. I suspect he would not have, if only because he was highly attuned to domestic political risks, and knew that shooting wars are not winners.
At the outset of the war Generals Eisenhower (Rep.)and Bradley(Dem.) jointly urged the president to go into it with full force or not to go at all, but I can't remember whether this advice, delivered on primetime TV, was for Kennedy or Johnson. They were right, of course, because in the long run wars always conclude faster and cost less when fought without restraint.
Louis Nelson Proyect - 6/5/2008
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.
Karl Marx, The German Ideology
Rick Shenkman - 6/5/2008
Fair enough.
Let's go back to Truman then.
Rodney Huff - 6/4/2008
People are powerful to the extent that they are able to hold leaders in whom they have vested power accountable. So far, none of our so-called leaders has been held accountable for the 9/11 attacks. Bush, Cheney, Rice and Mueller each said repeatedly soon after 9/11 that no one could have imagined that terrorists would hijack planes and smash them into buildings. However, Paul Thompson's Terror Timeline shows that the Bush administration received numerous warnings about threats concerning hijacked airplanes from at least 14 different foreign country's intelligence agencies, including a U.S intelligence document, specially crafted for the president, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US," shown to Bush on his ranch in August of 2001. Despite these numerous warnings, no defensive action was taken by this administration.
When the families of 9/11 victims successfully organized to pressure Bush to authorize an investigation into the attacks, something Bush was vehemently opposed to, one might have been attempted to chalk up a victory for the people. But the victory was soon amounted to a defeat, as the 9/11 Commission failed to answer many of the questions to which family members wanted answers (see the documentary 9/11: Press for Truth).
When one reads, in the beginning of the Final Report, that the Commission insists on not laying blame for the failure to prevent the attacks on anyone in particular - that everyone had somehow failed – one knows right away that the commission report is a cover up: If everyone failed, no one is responsible, no one can be held accountable.
Indeed, one is certain that the 9/11 Commission Report is a cover up when it goes on to state: "To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance" (see Chapter 5.4). Apparently, it doesn't matter who paid for 9/11. Are we so stupid to believe this? Rick, I agree that our politics are stupid, but I hope WE aren't as stupid as our politics.
I find it very strange that Philip Zelikow — the executive director of the 9/11 Commission who, at the recent AHA meeting, stressed the importance of not overlooking significant details in doing "microhistory" – I find it mind-boggling that he would overlook the significance of the collapse of WTC 7, the third building to collapse in Manhattan on 9/11. This collapse occurred much later than the other two, a little after 5 PM. WTC 7 wasn't even hit by a plane. Yet it fell in exactly the same manner as the other two WTC buildings, i.e., at nearly free-fall speed into its own footprint, the path of most resistance. Somehow, the 9/11 Commission Report fails to mention WTC 7 at all.
That the people have failed to hold any of our leaders accountable, that we have not gotten an honest independent investigation into the events of 9/11, that this administration is free to lie with impunity and ignore public opinion – all of this, I believe, indicates just how powerless We the People really are and just how powerful the elite decision-makers have become. It's no surprise, then, that many Americans feel powerless to effect change -- that is, if we regard the weak voting turnout for our elections as an indication of how powerful people feel.
Zinn, therefore, is right to highlight the crimes and corruption of elites as he attempts to wake ordinary people up to their civic and moral duties. If Zinn embraces a romantic vision of the people, as you claim, then he probably wouldn't feel the need to prod people to action with his corrective histories of popular resistance. If this were the case, the people would already know better.
Rodney Huff - 6/4/2008
On the other hand, when we do discover what has been done in our name, it is our civic and moral duty to address and ameliorate any wrongdoing. I think Zinn realizes this, but instead of castigating the public for not being sufficiently informed and distrustful of those in power, he seems to think he'll be more effective by shining a light on what the people need to be active against - i.e., the abuse of power by elites (the "Deciders") who are infinitely more responsible than the people for the decisions that they make, often without the people's knowledge or consent.
But then, even when "facts" about decisions do surface, we must confront the fact that acquiescence of the people is often secured by those who have the power to shape public opinion, namely, those who own or have ready access to the mass media, which often portrays events in a distorted manner and thus lead the people to wrong conclusions about what has been done in their name. The corporate owners of the mass media often achieve this feat by dispatching editors who frame public issues in terms dictated by elite interests and in ways that prevent certain questions and challenges from arising; they effectively manage public debate by steering it down certain channels, making sure that the assumptions implicit in the debate's framework go unquestioned. (This is the third face of power about which Steven Lukes speaks in his book Power: A Radical View.)
Take for instance the "war on terror," a subject of intense debate. This debate—played out on TV talk shows, news programs, and editorial sections of newspapers—concerns for the most part where and how the U.S. ought to fight this war. Rarely is the nebulous concept of this war ever questioned. Terror is a technique. How do you declare war on a technique? And how do you ever declare victory?
And now the war on terror has been used to justify the invasion of Iraq. But when we discovered that Saddam had no WMDs, we were told it was nevertheless imperative that we liberate the Iraqi people.
However, if we believe public opinion polls, there are now more people who disapprove the administration's policies in Iraq than there are those who support them. The interesting thing here is that the president proudly admits to ignoring the polls. When questioned about the polls recently during a television interview, Dick Cheney reaffirmed this attitude.
So, I don't think the obsessive attention paid to public polling is really indicative of the people's power, as you suggest in one of your comments above. At this stage in U.S. history, power is such that it is free to ignore the people.
Rodney Huff - 6/4/2008
I agree that We the People are in the end responsible for what is done in our name. But, as you acknowledge in your reply above, the problem is that much of what is done in our name is done without our knowledge or consent.
In The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills writes:
We cannot assume today that people must in the last resort be governed by their own consent. Among the means of power that now prevail is the power to manage and manipulate the consent of men [and women]. That we do not know the limits of such power—and that we hope it does have limits—does not remove the fact that much power today is successfully employed without the sanction of the reason or the conscience of the obedient (pp. 40-41).
Can the American people be blamed for Truman's decision to conduct indiscriminate mass slaughter by dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? This was a decision made with neither the public's knowledge nor consent, but it was nevertheless carried out in our name.
Similarly, were the American people ever consulted before CIA operatives instigated the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953? Are the American people ever consulted before the CIA performs any covert operation?
Rodney Huff - 6/4/2008
Hi Rick,
I don't think Zinn romanticizes We the People, as you claim. In fact, he acknowledges that a group of people, once oppressed, can in turn become oppressors. He also acknowledges that the oppressed can simultaneously be oppressors. These observations, which appear at the very beginning of A People's History, don't seem to constitute a romantic vision of We the People.
Rather than romanticize ordinary people, Zinn, I believe, is calling the American people back to their civic duties, attempting to dispel what C. Wright Mills calls the "conservative mood" -- a Panglossian mood of complacency and material comfort into which many Americans relaxed immediately following WWII -- a time when we should have been at our most vigilant, since Eisenhower warned about the rise of the military-industrial complex -- and then again during the Reagan era (see Mills's book The Power Elite).
In A people's History, Zinn reminds us that progress has prevailed at various points in U.S. history precisely because We the People became sufficiently organized, took to the streets, and successfully won out over conservative elements that either defended an unjust status quo or threatened to undo the progress achieved by an earlier generation of activists. (Progress, here, means progress towards realizing the ideals on which this country was founded [e.g., equality, due process, etc.])
Maarja Krusten - 6/3/2008
Since I mentioned above that there are relatively few GS-170 historian slots that open up these days, it's only fair to mention one that just did. My comment doesn't directly fit in under Rick's article, except in the sense of letting historians who have worked only in academe know about an opportunity for expanded horizons. Also, I've been urging HNN's readers to take a nuanced look at senior executive branch officials and not to use overly broad brush strokes or a reductionist approach.
For a grade GS-14 series 170 Supervisory Historian job at the National Archives *open to all candidates* (not just those with current federal status), see overview at
with qualifications at
qualifications and evaluation factors at
A good opportunity for an historian who may be considering federal employment. Some government jobs, including many at the National Archives, are open only to current federal employees, not so this one.
Charles S Young - 6/3/2008
Dr. Shenkman is evocative in describing Zinn's writing as "like stepping into a Frank Capra movie." Further, if Zinn were a song, he'd be Woody Guthrie's "This land is your land." Shenkman goes further to say Zinn let's the public off the hook for tolerating the atrocities of its government, or even cheering them on. Zinn supposedly does this because he sees the People as sinless beings immaculately conceived "in an almost divine burst of sunlight."
While Zinn does concentrate on the malevolence of the powerful, he does not deny public responsibility -- in fact, his entire program is one of getting The People to act. Zinn writes as an activist, a pamphleteer, whose purpose is to get people TOO take responsibility. Granted, he puts it in nicer terms than saying Muncie has blood on its hands, but his work is exactly the opposite of giving the masses a pass. Getting people to act -- to take responsibility -- is implicit in every syllable he utters. Maybe, however, telling Muncie that it has the shredded skin of napalmed babies on its hands would work. Please try it and report back.
Shenkman sees in Zinn a long excuse, but I don't think that's what grass roots activists get out of his books. They get inspiration, not sedation. I think the difference comes from reading Zinn from an academic or activist point of view.
Further, while lack of knowledge should not be excused, let's not underestimate how difficult it can be to rise above mainstream discourse. When people simply do not have the information or know where to get it, they can be very slow to wiseup. And don't forget that public demands are regularly ignored, contributing to cynicism and passivity. Two-thirds of the public wants out of Iraq, yet there is no movement towards that. Why have an opinion if it makes no difference? This is not to take people off the hook, just to point out there's more to apathy than leftists soft-pedaling popular shortcomings.
That said, I think the public should hear more about its lapses. The book _What's the Matter with Kansas_ is an excellent contribution to such a mass critique. But people are not complaisant because Howard Zinn told them they are spotless.
Another point: there is great disparity in the influence wielded by a captain of industry and Joe main street. Author's like Zinn SHOULD concentrate more blame on elites, since they are more responsible, and are in a better position to change things.
I don't think Zinn's writings should be seen as the last word on the responsibilities of The People. They are an antidote to the view that common people do not participate in history. For more, we need to read another book, like Kansas.
Shenkman believes failure in recognizing the passivity of the public is a "blind spot" of the left. On the contrary, figuring out how to get people to care is the left's obsession. From a sixth-grade anti-littering campaign, to Greenpeace stunts, the fixation of every little activist group is how to get people moving. The fact that the public has responsibilities and shortcomings is so implicit it rarely needs saying.
william e vanvugt - 6/3/2008
After four visits to Vietnam with my students, and talking with many Vietnamese officials and former soldiers, one thing very clear is that JFK did NOT "start" the Vietnam War. That is a pathetically distorted view: it started with the US failed to recognize the Geneva agreements that accompanied French withdrawl, and began to support the Diem regime in the South and prevented the scheduled elections from taking place. American historians really ought not to think everything from strictly their own American perspective.
Maarja Krusten - 6/3/2008
You write that in the universities, military and diplomatic history are out of fashion. And Rick Shenkman notes that few professors care to do research in the papers of political leaders. Yet we live in an age where Internet forums provide many venues for academics to share with the public their thoughts on U.S. history and governance. I wish there were greater alignment between the former (field of specialization) and the latter (public outreach).
A friend of mine, an historian who worked first in an academic environment (as a professor and as a dean) and later for the federal government, once told me that nothing in the academic environment prepared him for how government really operates. He found that had to get up to speed by trial and error.
Richard Hewlett once noted that for some academics, "a common way of speaking about government employment is 'selling one's soul to the devil.'" However, Dr. Hewlett believed "we need more historians who are willing to commit themselves to a career or at least to a period of several years as government historians." (See Hewlett, "Government History: Writing from the Inside," in Frank C. Evans and Harold T. Pinkett, eds., Research in the Administration of Public Policy (Washington: Howard University Press, 1975)
Not every academic would want to do that. And the opportunities just aren't there for the most part. These days, tight budgets at civil and military agencies mean that the number of civil service GS-170 Historian positions of the type my friend once held (and I still do) are very few. These days, many agencies turn to contractors to handle short term assignments, instead of hiring permanent staff who immerse themselves in governmental culture. But even from outside, I believe that historians can help with civic education. One way is by linking what happens in the White House to common workplace experiences.
In some ways, a President is no different from any boss for whom any of HNN's readers have worked. He has a public face and a private face. Citizens largely see the public face while he is in office. Historians play a role in revealing the private face as they study his administration.
In considering how a President handles risk assessment and makes decisions, I believe it helps to consider management science. That is something to which many citizens can relate, whether they work in the private or public sector, because they themselves are managers or work for people who are. It helps to cast things in terms to which they relate their own workplace experiences.
I sometimes do that in looking back on my work as a National Archives' employee with Richard Nixon's tapes and documents.
How did the White House chief of staff and the Staff Secretary handle paper flow? What information reached the President and who screened it before he saw it? Did the President prefer oral briefings? Or did he prefer to study detailed option papers? Instead of detailed overviews, did he want things boiled down to "one-pagers" of the type many busy corporate officials prefer?
Did his style of management make it easy or hard to convey to him information when the news or potential outcome was bad? Was a "shoot the messenger" syndrome present? Or was there a "reward the messenger" approach to bad news? Did he and his top officials exhibit workplace behaviors which inhibited or prevented candid discussion of what management experts Kathleen Ryan and Daniel Oestreich refer to as "undiscussables?" (See Ryan & Oestreich, DRIVING FEAR OUT OF THE WORKPLACE (1991, Rev. 1998)) Or did they encourage broad ranging discussion of options?
Did meetings stretch out beyond a point of usefulness or were they held in a crisp and efficient manner? Whom did he confide in and why? How did officials handle post-decisional reviews and lessons learned? These are issues to which I believe many working Americans can relate because they encounter some of the same challenges in their own workplaces.
Historians who have immersed themselves in the pre-decisional records of the modern Presidency understand that decision making is not as neat and tidy and bright as our high school civics books once implied to us. (At age 57, I'm of the generation which still studied "civics" and "problems of democracy" in classes of such names in high school.) Of course, not all voters do -- this isn't something they study. But I believe that historians haven't done as good a job as they might have in making governance seem less remote to citizens - in a nonpartisan manner and readily accessible language and formats.
Rick Shenkman - 6/2/2008
It is a fact that JFK started the war. It is also a fact that LBJ moved it from a defensive to an offensive war in 1965. See DERELICTION OF DUTY by McMaster.
I wrote that LBJ was responsible for launching a FULL-SCALE WAR IN VIETNAM.
This is a fact.
As for me being an apologist for JFK, as you imply. Read my books and you won't say that.
Lawrence Brooks Hughes - 6/2/2008
"LBJ used a murky set of events to launch a full-scale war in Vietnam."
Lefty historians, whether Zinn or Shenkman, always avoid the irrefutable truth that John F. Kennedy launched the Vietnam War. It was Kennedy who sent the first 17,000 U.S. troops to Vietnam, in late 1963, shortly before he was murdered. That was two and a half years after Eisenhower left office, so Ike's 450 advisors cannot be coupled with Kennedy's awful blunder, as is usually done in the same breath when the left finds it impossible to leave Kennedy's name out. The malpractice in this area is so bad many kids emerge from school today thinking Nixon was the only president during Vietnam.
Jeremy Young - 6/2/2008
Maarja, thanks for the compliment and for the comment. I agree with most of what you say, though I'd caution that those historians who post at HNN are, by and large, more interested and willing to engage with the general public than historians in general. Even being willing to post on a forum like HNN is a huge step in the right direction.
But I assure you I'm one of those historians (in-training) who are very interested in both political leaders and the followers they garner. In fact, that appears to be the subject of my nascent dissertation.
Jeremy Young - 6/2/2008
All right. Thanks for your response.
Hi Clare,
I know that it is fashionable to think that ordinary people are powerless. But compared with almost any other era, ordinary people have never had more power. Their opinions are measured almost hourly by polls that are then distributed to the country at large. They can use referendums to directly shape policy. They get to pick the nominees of the two major parties through primaries. And, of course, women and minorities have the vote.
This is not to minimize the impact of special interests on legislation drafted behind closed doors.
Clare Lois Spark - 6/2/2008
Our Editor has raised a vital question, but the problem needs to be fleshed out even further.
When I was on the radio (Pacifica) I was constantly astonished at how intelligent and thoughtful our listeners were, many of them working-class. But I think also that many of them thought that listening to a left-wing radio station was some sort of social action. What they are faced with is a culture that is irrationalist in many respects, and that provides political parties that are internally incoherent and in many respects, anti-intellectual.
Rick Shenkman has himself pointed out the lack of unity in our country. I would put at the top of the list the problem of federalism: that local constituencies control the education system that socializes children and adolescents. And in the universities, military and diplomatic history are out of fashion. Add to this the aversion to scientific thinking and critical thought in general, perpetuated in popular culture.
Finally, my main point is that "the people" (too general a category in my view) deserve better, but the particular history of our country of immigrants, nativists, and ex-slaves militates against the development of a thoughtful polity.
We are a long way from the eighteenth-century promise of a democratic republic. It is still appropriate to analyze the decision-making of our oligarchs and opinion-makers. "The people" who are deemed responsible by the Editor are structurally powerless.
In response to Jeremy's post:
Zinn has a romantic view of The People that I don't share. That's the first thing.
Second, and more importantly, I take issue with the leftist assumption that when things go wrong it's always because of some nefarious powerful interest: the media, corporations, whatever. Aren't The People ever to blame?
To me it is condescending to let The People off the hook. They are in charge. Therefore they have to take responsibility for what happens in this society.
This wasn't true a hundred years ago when The People had far less power than they do today. But now that women and minorities can vote and their views are taken seriously by pollsters and politicians alike the calculus of politics has changed.
I do not mean to imply that the media cannot also be taken to task or other large and powerful groups. But in our more democratic society they cannot be solely held responsible for what happens.
unless we come to terms with The People's limitations we can't begin to reform the system to ensure that they are better informed.
Leftists like Zinn always assume that
Maarja Krusten - 6/2/2008
Apologies for typos, right should be write, etc. I posted quickly as I was about to leave for work. I never know when someone might want to flame me (few readers post agreement with my views here so I don't take congeniality for granted here although Jeremy always has been civil to me) hence the explanation. In transit now on subway.
Maarja Krusten - 6/2/2008
Isn't it a mistake for historians to paint both "the people" and political leaders in such broad brush terms as to reduce them to cartoonish figures? That few historians nowadays closely study political figures is evident in many of the essays I read on HNN. They rarely capture the struggles of people in government who are trying to deal with difficult challenges as events unfold. Perhaps it is because I spent so much time listening to thousands of hours of Nixon's White House recordings, but too often, what I see written here on HNN by historians seems like history by template. In my view, this makes it harder for the writers to have mass appeal in what they right.
In his presentation to AHA this past January, Philip Zelikow argued that "For it's by digging in the details that you find out how people thought, who they got along with, how decisions were made, and when they were made." How many historians accept that view? Hard to say. If you go to the piece Rick Shenkman posted about his presentation at
you'll see that I was the only person to post a comment.
If you look at articles historians post here about current events, rarely do they convey a sense that "we know only what we read in the newspapers, here's my take based on what I and other members of the public know now. Admittedly, I may be missing something here. We may gain greater insights over time as we learn more about what happened behind the scenes." I often point to LBJ's anguished recorded conversations during the course of the Vietnam War. These show the more nuanced view of a President that emerges when historians learn what lay behind the bland or cheerleading press releases his subordinates once issued on his behalf or the mud his opponents flung at him.
Just as political figures often come across as too remote or cartoon-like in some historical narratives, so do ordinary Americans. The same sources that provide insights into executive actions also provide interesting glimpses into how some voters felt. Presidential Libraries hold numerous letters sent to the President by ordinary citizens. These capture contemporary opinion but scholars turn to them even more rarely than they do the records that capture executive interactions.
That some scholars struggle in their interactions with "the people" also is evident on HNN. Some historians seem curiously uninterested in learning more about them, even when faced directly with questions from non-academic posters (such as some of the veterans who post here) under their articles. Many missed opportunities here and in other Internet forums in which historians gather.
"The people" are not a monolithic group, they have varying life experiences, which undergird their posted comments. Perhaps I am unusual in being interested in why people form the political stances they do. Few scholars take advantage of HNN as a forum for interacting with the individuals who comprise the American voter. Although the sample is self selecting, there are interesting insights in the comments posted here in past years by voters.
More and more, people seem to reject some messages because of their perceptions of the messenger. By that I mean not just news outlets, but also some scholars. I first encountered this type of cherry picking on HNN, when I once cited a study on which CNN had reported. A reader rejected the findings, noting, "Look at the source, it's CNN, they never are fair to Republicans." When I replied that CNN didn't conduct the study, it only reported on what a third party polling organization found, the reader lapsed into silence. I very much doubt he clicked on the link I provided. I'm an Independent. I once considered myself a Republican (from 1968 to 1989) but it even with that in common with the reader, never occurred to me to look at the story on CNN the way he did.
The echo chamber is an increasing problem these days, not only for news outlets, but for historians as well. It remains to be seen how the newer, Web 2.0 generation of historians will handle the problem of insularity.
BTW, glad to see you've added Mark Safranski (Zenpundit) to your blog, Jeremy, good move, one which reflects well on you.
Jeremy Young - 6/2/2008
Thanks for your response. So how exactly is that different from Zinn's view? Is it Zinn's assumption that the people are always fighting on the side of justice and equality that bothers you? If he admits that they can be manipulated and often have been, but that their hearts are good nevertheless, how exactly does that differ from your view?
First, as to who might buy the book. The book is for every person who is discouraged by the low level at which our politics are conducted. Maybe that's even a majority. (Even people who don't follow the news closely are often aware they are being spun and manipulated.)
Second, I never said the people are weak and wicked. I suggest on the blog that there's a 5 part test of stupidity and unfortunately our politics often meet one or more of those tests. Politics are stupid when people are uninformed, susceptible to slogans, etc.
I have great confidence that Americans posses the moral ability to reach a solid decision when presented with the facts. The trick is getting them to pay attention. Most don't for a variety of reasons.
One on one in my experience they will grope for answers, but lacking basic facts they are like a blind man in a dark room looking for black socks, to paraphrase a famous saying.
Jeremy Young - 6/2/2008
And you've got great guts to assail the people and then expect them to buy your book anyway. I admire you for it, truly.
What I'm wondering is how exactly you conceive of "the people." I think you're saying that Zinn views the people in a sort of Le Bon fashion -- as a gullible but good-hearted crowd that is easily manipulated. I agree with your revision of that, but I'm not sure your implication that the people are simply weak and wicked is any better. What interests me is what happens when you get individual members of "the people" alone and ask them what they think about Rwanda, or segregation, or any of our infinite crimes. From your promo video, it looks like you might have done some of that (when you're not just asking them questions they don't have answers to). What have they said? Any general thoughts on this?
Stephen Kislock - 6/1/2008
I hear conversation about, American Idol, Movies, Sports. But when it comes to Politics, it's I don't know, or care.
To guage The People's interest/cupability, what percentage Vote?
One local Paper (Beaver County Times) carriers daily news about Iraq, Afghanistian. The Major [Pittsburgh]newspaper, may have only two or three a week. Forget local TV News!
Yes, The People, are Responsible for their governments actions, Very good point.
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