On this 4th of July, some quotes from Howard Zinn

After being dormant for a while, the Mid Hudson Progressive Alliance blog is ready to relaunch. So, to do so, I give you some quotes from the late Howard Zinn. These seem very appropriate to reflect on on a day devoted to the American Revolution.

The Founding Fathers were not just ingenious organizers of a new nation (though they certainly were that) but also rich white slaveholders, merchants, bondholders, fearful of lowerclass rebellion, or as James Madison put it, of "an equal division of property." Our military heroes-Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt-were racists, Indian-killers, war-lovers, imperialists. Our most liberal presidents-Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy-were more concerned with political power and national aggrandizement than with the rights of nonwhite people.

People are practical. They want change but feel powerless, alone, do not want to be the blade of grass that sticks up above the others and is cut down. They wait for a sign from someone else who will make the first move, or the second. And at certain times in history, there are intrepid people who take the risk that if they make that first move others will follow quickly enough to prevent their being cut down. And if we understand this, we might make that first move.

The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured.

Social movements may have many "defeats" - failing to achieve objectives in the short run - but in the course of the struggle the strength of the old order begins to erode, the minds of people begin to change.

If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

... What normally operates day by day is the quiet dominance of certain ideas, the ideas we are expected to hold by our neighbors, our employers, and our political leaders; the ones we quickly learn are the most acceptable. The result is an obedient, acquiescent, passive citizenry-a situation that is deadly to democracy. If one day we decide to reexamine these beliefs and realize they do not come naturally out of our innermost feelings or our spontaneous desires, are not the result of independent thought on our part, and, indeed, do not match the real world as we experience it, then we have come to an important turning point in life. Then we find ourselves examining, and confronting, American ideology.

In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.

For a prince, a dictator, or a tyrant national power is an end unquestioned. A democratic state ... must present national power as benign, serving the interests of liberty, justice, and humanity.

Happy Fourth of July! Here's to reclaiming a more progressive view of America and its destiny!