Children are uniquely malleable beings, readily convinced of magically colorful tales – Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are the first that come to mind. This innocence is beautiful, but it is a quality that can easily fall victim to radically foreign ideas if taught consistently and pervasively at an early age. One need only look at the birth of fascism or socialism to see a recipe for how radical ideas become ubiquitous among a nation’s youth.

Enter Howard Zinn – an author, professor and American historian – who, with the help of Hollywood and the History Channel, intends to change the way our pre-K through high school children learn American history. His current curriculum suggestions, like introducing three-year-olds to the lynching of African-Americans, or quizzing seven-year-olds on which Presidents owned slaves, should be a red flag to parents.

Zinn has spent a lifetime teaching college students about the evils of capitalism, the promise of Marxism, and his version of American history – a history that has, in his view, been kept from students. His controversial 1980-book The People’s History of the United States paints traditional American history as a façade – one that has grotesquely immortalized flawed leaders and is based on principles that victimize the common man. In 2004, Zinn wrote a companion book entitled Voices Of A People’s History Of The United States, which includes speeches and writings from many of the people featured in The People’s History.

These two books have now become the basis for a new documentary, entitled The People Speak, to be aired December 13th at 8pm on the History Channel. The trailer portrays the documentary as a collage of compelling one-person readings, told through the words of “ordinary” people who have struggled throughout American history against oppression. Produced by Zinn, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Chris Moore, the documentary appears to be cloaked, ironically (given Zinn’s admitted socialist agenda), in many of the traditional ideas that were behind our founding. The verdict is still out on the doc, but it is not for the books that inspired the film as well as the educational initiative associated with it. (more…)

There is an often overlooked fact in the discussion of the advancement of minorities over the past 100 years.  No single group has done more to “level the playing field” bring about “social justice” or move our nation towards equality than the white male.

Unless I’m missing something, I don’t recall the Women’s Suffrage Revolt of 1920 where armed women stormed the Capitol, beheaded president Harding and declared their right to vote.  I also must have missed it when Martin Luther King Jr. unleashed suicide bombers on D.C. until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

No.  Great men and women brought the nation together and increased awareness of social and political injustices.  The great service of Martin Luther King, Fredrick Douglas, Susan B. Anthony and others was to expose injustice and let the powers that be know that the Constitution should and does apply to all people.

Power, they say, is taken and not given.  Except, of course, in the United States. (more…)