| | Luke,
I did some quick research on Zinn. He epitomizes the nature and the effectiveness of the progressive movement's use of the educational system to attack capitalism. And he is also an example of the tight set of connections that link the members of the far left together.
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From the Wikipedia article on Zinn: Zinn described himself as "something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist", He suggested looking at socialism in its full historical context as a popular, positive idea that got a bad name from its association with Soviet Communism." In that article, Zinn is quoted as saying, "Socialism basically [says], hey, let's have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism." (More and more I notice the way socialists and progressives eschew real arguments in favor of cliched phrases that have no meaning - like Zinn's "...go beyond capitalism.")
More from the Wikipedia article: "Established by school teachers while he was alive, the Zinn Education Project is Howard Zinn's legacy to middle- and high-school teachers and their students. The nonprofit organization offers classroom teachers free and low-cost teaching activities based on A People's History and like-minded history texts." (About 85,000 lesson plans are distributed per year.) This organization is connected to a wide number of radical teachers sites, like the Teachers for Social Justice out of Chicago - remember Stephanie Hicks and the recent teacher's strike in Chicago?
I spotted a lot of familiar names as I looked through that article. He was friends with Noam Chomsky, and Daniel Berrigan (Like Jane Fonda, Zinn visited Hanoi - went with Berrigan during the Tet Offensive). He associated with the sixties, radical outfit SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee who replaced 'Non-violent' with 'National' when they decided that violence was an acceptable political tool). He published the Pentagon papers copied by Daniel Ellsberg. He received the Eugene V Debs award (named after the Socialist union boss). He studied history at Columbia University under Henry Steele Commager (activist, and far left historian), and under Richard Hofstadter (tenured professor and a member of the Communist Party of the USA - Quote from Hofstadter: ""I hate capitalism and everything that goes with it"). As a side note, Hofstadter employed one of the radical students for a project - a Mike Wallace, who went on to become the Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of New York. Our universities are self-perpetuating in their progressivism. They have been 'breeding' true for far left grad students that become the next generation of teachers whose job is to turn out journalists, writers, pundits, and activists. He was honored with the Thomas Merton Award (recent recipients include such notables as Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Cindy Sheehan, Angela Davis, and Ron Dellums)
From David Horowitz: "According to one of his pupils, author Alice Walker, Zinn, during the communist takeover of China, once told his class: 'I stand to the left of Mao Zedong.' " ... "Zinn was also a pro-Castro activist and a supporter of such organizations as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Progressive Labor Party, the Socialist Workers Party, and the Black Panther Party. In 1962 he publicly protested America's demand that the Soviet Union withdraw its missiles from Cuba." ... "A People’s History has sold more than a million copies, making it one of the best-selling history books of all time. Despite its lack of footnotes and other scholarly apparatus, it is one of most influential texts in college classrooms today -- not only in history classes, but also in such fields as economics, political science, literature, and women’s studies. Professor Zinn announced the overtly political agenda of A People’s History in an explanatory coda to the 1995 edition: 'I wanted my writing of history and my teaching of history to be a part of social struggle. I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude towards history, history itself as a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching.' ” Zinn is a signature of the 911 Truthers document. He was on the board of MDS (Movement for a Democratic Society - out of Chicago, organized to mentor and support the new SDS) including Bernadine Dohrn, Noam Chomsky, Tom Hayden and Rashid Khalidi (long time friend of Barrack and Michelle and PLO supporter). Bill Ayers has worked with MDS but not as a board member.
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Bottom line: Progressivism is America's implementation of England's Fabian Socialism back in the late 1800's and their stated goal to use the colleges and universities to eliminate capitalism and replace it with socialism over a period of many generations instead of a violent revolution. They focused primarily on the history and political science departments but have spread. They hide their agenda, and they have an elite who tend to know each other.
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