Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "Howard Zinn and the Book That Poisoned a Generation | 5 Minute Video" video.

  1. Zinn merely replaced one form of propaganda for another. Many that we hold up as American heroes, like Lincoln or either of the Roosevelts, set very bad precedents for the centralization and abuse of power by the federal government. The South would've come around on the slavery issue without a bloody civil war and carpetbagger profiteers from the North sweeping through the South afterward. Our history isn't perfect. Our government schools retconned a lot of mistakes of our past. Zinn retconned the principles of liberty and natural rights of Man that make America an imperfect but REAL hope for the future of the USA and the world. There's a more nuanced reading of history that few receive. In essence, when we depart from the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, we become more and more like what our nation was created to avoid. This doesn't justify slavery, but those principles made slavery impossible to sustain, even though it had existed, uninterrupted for millennia before our nation's founding. Yes, the bathwater got dirty washing the baby. Zinn threw out the baby with the bathwater. But I'd be careful about saying "Zinn was wrong. America is perfect." Zinn was a hack, BUT there are kernels of truth sprinkled throughout his book. America isn't perfect BUT America is pretty wonderful!
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