Make America Great — Again??? – Part I

Howard Zinn:  There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. ...  Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem. 

Daniel J.  Flynn:   Thumb through A People’s History of the United States and you will find greed as the motivating factor behind every act of those who don’t qualify as “the people” in Zinn’s book According to Zinn, the separation from Great Britain, the Civil War, and both World Wars all were the result of base motives of the “ruling class” -- rich men to get richer at the expense of others. - See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1493#sthash.WcPNm2Cv.dpuf

Thanks to Audible, I am listening to Howard Zinn’s 34+ hour tome ("A People's History of the United States").  It is intriguing, depressing, and infuriating.    When listening I cannot help but wonder if the letters and documents from which Mr. Zinn quotes were actually written 300+ years ago.   What documents did he research to record this unseemly perspective of American history?  

On the one hand, how can any thinking person intelligently rationalize the taking of lands from native Americans – and repeatedly violating treaties with them?   How could any thinking adult characterize the U.S. slave system as a guest worker program, as characterized in recent textbooks?  How can anyone deny the evidence of beatings, lynchings (with thousands in attendance) and burnings, of the destruction of entire subdivisions and towns that took place after the abolition of slavery and well into the 20th century?  

On the other hand, how can it be denied that some people of "privilege" lost everything, including their lives, fighting against injustice on the side of and for the freedoms of those oppressed?  It is said by certain segments of the darker nation that all people of the paler nation are evil.  That is as ridiculous as saying that all people of the darker nation are upright and right-living!  

But there is a troubling segment of folks — those who want to make American great again.  Their thought processes and rationalizations escape me.   One must first have an inkling as to when America was great.   From this writer’s perspective, we have yet to live up to greatness.  Yes, we have done some right things, sprinkled among the wrong.  Somehow, it is difficult for right to overcome greed, fears and prejudices.  So the question to these folks is:   When was America great, and what was that like?