Why the Revolutionary War Was Bad

[YoungGunLover]

I was doing a little reading and came across this. I just shook my head the whole time reading the article. I know it is about 4 years old, but the ideas from the article holds true even more today with the "progressive" movement and how they think. Sorry if this has been posted before, but I don't recall seeing it anytime within the last year.

Untold Truths About the American Revolution | The Progressive

 

[Sullivan_pbr]

I couldn't even finish the article.

 

[Jarhead77]

Writer is spinning the story pretty hard. Canada is NOT an example to make analogies with, do some reading and learn the history!

He is telling it in a very one sided fashion! Why did Lexington and Concord happen?

Another hater at work!!!

 

[IndyDave1776]

The title of the website tells us much. As for the content, no surprises. Of course Canada will be held up as a sterling example given that its people are much more sheepified than ours (which is a critical goal of 'progressives') and it is more socialistic, at least until we see how ObamaCare shakes out. I would be remiss in failing to point out that a major part of Canada's funding available for socialist nonsense comes from the fact that we carry a significant part of the burden of Canada's defense. While Canada has not completely abdicated its own defense, it is clearly not capable of handling a war on its own. This author clearly prefers living on his knees to dying on his feet, as demonstrated by the fact that he does not consider liberty worth dying for and does not have a problem with being a serf/second-class citizen/subject which is exactly what our colonial forebears were prior to the revolution. He can prefer as he chooses. Dave does not bow and scrape or beg and grovel.

 

[Kirk Freeman]

Guys, it's Howard Zinn. What did youe expect? A stirring defense of the United States of America?

Matt Damon's hero is no fan of the USA.

 

[Coach]

Guys, it's Howard Zinn. What did youe expect? A stirring defense of the United States of America?

Matt Damon's hero is no fan of the USA.

"youe"

 

[cobber]

So Zinn's argument is that an empire is preferable to a republic.

Wonder how all the people of color colonized by that empire in the 18th and 19th centuries felt about that?

Zinn conflates history into what is an unknowable instant. For instance arguing that Canada today is a swell place to live. However, Canada in 1775 was a British company town, run for the shareholders of the Hudson's Bay Company. The entire purpose of Canada was to trap and process beaver pelts to make gentlemen's hats (until the 1840s when Prince Albert donned a silk hat and beaver fur was no longer needed). Beavers were virtually exterminated by the Canadians. And the Canadian record with native persons was no better than the American, continuing to the present. The other North American colonies for the most part specialized in the extraction of wealth for the benefit of London. Apparently serfdom is okay, in Zinn's book.

Zinn is representative of the revisionist school that grew out of the campus activism of the 60s and 70s. He is typical of the profs that are teaching your sons and daughters in college today. He is not the most absurd however. Peruse any of the 'professional' journals these days, and you will see where your tuition dollars go. You won't be happy, though.

Universities are like sausage factories. If you inspected the inner workings, you would never want to consume the end product.

 

[Kirk Freeman]

So Zinn's argument is that an empire is preferable to a republic.

If you wish to command rather than contract. If you wish to be a Baron or maybe even a Marquis. Or, if you want to pull the strings of power and have people listen to you, is not empire the optimal arrangement?

As a professor he can be a court advisor and tell the Emperor how to manage the serfs.

It is the worship of the Power of Man. Same old story since the Garden.

 

[mikem1]

sorry that was the worst thing I have ever read about the war for independents.
but the word progessive usually makes me skip over it . . .

 

[cobber]

Of course Canada will be held up as a sterling example given that its people are much more sheepified than ours (which is a critical goal of 'progressives') and it is more socialistic, at least until we see how ObamaCare shakes out.

Canada was sheepifed from the outset. You came to Canada as a laborer, serving at the pleasure of the London shareholders. You treated management as nobility. There weren't industrial actions, strikes, or negotiations. Some of the creole employees would just walk off and live with the natives, but as a European employee, that option was not open to you.

Canadians never had a tradition of settlement on/past the frontier, as Americans did. You simply did not have that option/freedom in Canada. So you were 'protected' by the Company, which in turn depended on the Crown. When your contract expired, you might return home, or stay as a laborer. There was some settlement along the St. Lawrence, but you would have no farming/homesteading skills and probably no family to give mutual support.

The US and Canada are in no way historically comparable. Zinn is woefully ignorant of Canadian history, or deliberately misleads to bolster his demi-argument.

I think the former. He shouldn't venture into terra incognita without his GPS.

 

[spencer rifle]

About the New Press People’s History series editor: - Hiroshima/Nagasaki apologist and a fan of redistributionist taxation, Howard Zinn described himself as "something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist." His book, A People’s History of the United States, has been called “… a synthesis of the radical and revisionist historiography of the past decade…” “Writing in Dissent, Georgetown University history professor Michael Kazin argued that Zinn is too focused on class conflict, and wrongly attributes sinister motives to the American political elite. He characterized the book as an overly simplistic narrative of elite villains and oppressed people, with no attempt to understand historical actors in the context of the time in which they lived.” - from an unpublished book review

 

[jwh20]

I was doing a little reading and came across this. I just shook my head the whole time reading the article. I know it is about 4 years old, but the ideas from the article holds true even more today with the "progressive" movement and how they think. Sorry if this has been posted before, but I don't recall seeing it anytime within the last year.

Untold Truths About the American Revolution | The Progressive

Consider the source! Zinn is a well known "revisionist" historian and a connsumate liberal-elitist academic.

He'd have been advising FDR to negotiate peace with Japan after Pearl Harbor. His hero is the milquetoast Neville Chamberlain and his "peace in our time" treaty with Adolph Hitler.

Really, do you expect anything more from a person like this?

 

[actaeon277]

If these people hate America so much, why don't they just go someplace else?

 

[Streck-Fu]

Consider the source! Zinn is a well known "revisionist" historian and a connsumate liberal-elitist academic.

He'd have been advising FDR to negotiate peace with Japan after Pearl Harbor. His hero is the milquetoast Neville Chamberlain and his "peace in our time" treaty with Adolph Hitler.

Really, do you expect anything more from a person like this?

What a sucker he was....

 

[jbombelli]

If you wish to command rather than contract. If you wish to be a Baron or maybe even a Marquis. Or, if you want to pull the strings of power and have people listen to you, is not empire the optimal arrangement?

As a professor he can be a court advisor and tell the Emperor how to manage the serfs.

It is the worship of the Power of Man. Same old story since the Garden.

Or... he could find himself working in the fields as a slave until he dies, or dancing at the end of a rope, depending on who's actually in charge and their view of the intelligentsia.

 

[$mooth]

Interesting perspective. seems off to me, but similar to US history textbooks that paint everything the US did as saintly.

 

[KevinJ]

Say what you will about Canada they do have 2 things going for them:
That french fry breakfast with the gravy and cheese! Yum
They did help out a bit with our people in Iran.

 

[$mooth]

Say what you will about Canada they do have 2 things going for them:
That french fry breakfast with the gravy and cheese! Yum
They did help out a bit with our people in Iran.

Poutine is not a breakfast dish, but I've had it as such before.

Americans do like to make fun of the Canadian military. They are smaller, but quite well trained (see JTF2). I would say they are slightly under gunned, but not terribly given their role in the world. The US is heavily over gunned, but a lot of that is due to backing up our interventionist policies.

As for Freedom, Canada is about on par with the US. They hit some of the biggies, but the US caters to a lot of special interests and protecting companies. For light reading:Canada Economy: Population, GDP, Inflation, Business, Trade, FDI, Corruption

 

[nawainwright]

After having read the article, I wonder how this person ever got published....anywhere. His writing style is jolted, his points are garbled, and he never really makes much of an argument. As a pastor, I write a sermon a week, far longer than this diatribe. If I were to give a message, written like this, on any given Sunday, I might not have a job. I have read articles by middle-schoolers who articulated their ideas better than this buffoon.

 

[IndyDave1776]

After having read the article, I wonder how this person ever got published....anywhere. His writing style is jolted, his points are garbled, and he never really makes much of an argument. As a pastor, I write a sermon a week, far longer than this diatribe. If I were to give a message, written like this, on any given Sunday, I might not have a job. I have read articles by middle-schoolers who articulated their ideas better than this buffoon.

You are right, but so long as it says what his masters want to hear and the sheep buy it, it could be written in pig latin for all they care.