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Do you have a snap of the fingers definition residing in your brain about what a progressive is? Do you have some idea of the history of the progressive movement in America? Are you a progressive, a liberal or a conservative? Do these designations have any meaning or do they serve as ad hoc words for coffee breaks and tea parties? What resonates in your brain when you try to explain what a progressive is or what it is that progressives have done for America? Is the progressive label a worn-out word ready for discard? Writer Michael Lux has taken on these issues with a delightful book, “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came To Be.” Lux is involved in OpenLeft and Progressive Strategies and other liberal organizations and consultant groups.  He worked at one time in the Clinton administration on the failed healthcare effort; he is unabashedly a progressive and committed to progressive causes and the transformation of America by relying on its traditional progressive history. This  is not a work of deep scholarship, though he quotes more scholarly citations throughout the book.  Progressive Revolution has a single purpose: to identify, extract and simplify contributions of progressives throughout the history of the United States and demonstrate their successes and failures while taking a stab at delineating the reasons why they did either or both. His basic, take-home message is that America has advanced its Democracy only through progressive movements, fine-tuned by public demands and influence and that we have not had a big progressive push since Lyndon Johnson’s triumphs on civil rights, together with the passage of Medicare and Medicaid; we are long overdue for another progressive revolution, for which he believes the country is now prepared and hopeful. In fact, he believes that the country is far ahead of the current wave of politicians, particularly the Democrats, who are too timid and cautious, so much so that they could fail by not identifying the mood of the country and the public receptivity for dramatic change. On that subject, I am in complete agreement with Lux–the country is ready for change. The polls reflect their impatience with the status quo and the need for a dramatic left turn on many social issues, including healthcare. They are ready for a massive reform movement and no longer fear government programs.  Indeed the majority of our citizens believe that government can do good things. So where are the Democrats that recognize this national mood for dramatic change? That’s the problem. So far, those that are enthusiastic for progressive change are not yet in the majority of Congress and we have a timid President who needs pressure from external forces to galvanize his spirit and drop the nonsense of bipartisanship. When FDR passed Social Security and saved American seniors from falling into abject poverty, every Republican voted against the bill. Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with (on) America” intended to gut Social Security, until his mother warned him against doing so. But, we get ahead of the story.

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The death of Howard Zinn two weeks ago stirred a controversy that ruptured into a fault line running through academics, historians and intellectuals about history and scholarship, in a way that perhaps only Zinn could truly appreciate.  Controversial as a historian, Zinn’s death evoked a skirmish that revealed something more fundamental about our country than it did about Howard Zinn and his work. It all started when Allison Keyes of NPR, on the radio show “All Things Considered,” recruited a small group to comment on Zinn’s life and work and serve as a broadcast  obituary.  Many news sources have obituaries pre-written for famous people before they die, but apparently NPR either doesn’t practice that behavior or at least hadn’t done so for Howard Zinn, though perhaps that’s the difference between radio and newsprint.  Noam Chomsky spoke briefly. He was an obvious choice, a good friend of Zinn’s and was very knowledgeable about his work. Former Civil Rights leader Julian Bond was a second choice and was also  appropriate given Zinn’s activist role in a career of issues, including civil rights and the Vietnam war. However, the flip side of the short NPR segment consisted of comments by David Horowitz, the former liberal turned conservative noise maker, race-baiter and vocational Muslim-hater, who has nothing of substance to his resume, except he comes with a loud voice box. It was not even clear that he had read Zinn’s work or if he got his information by listening to Faux News. Horowitz tried to summarize Zinn’s work by stating “There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn’s intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect,” and “A People’s History of the United States is a travesty.”  Zinn’s colleagues reacted quickly to Horowitz’s comments, not because he said anything new or unexpected, but questions were raised about duplicitous behavior on the part of NPR.  Colleagues of Zinn’s questioned why Horowitz had been invited to comment at all. One blogger stated “When I heard that historian and activist Howard Zinn died on Wednesday, I wondered how (or even if) NPR would cover his death. They have quite a track record of glorifying some of the vilest characters of the right (e.g. torture apologist and dictator loving Jeanne Kirkpatrick, economist Milton Friedman, and Jerry Falwell) when their lives come to an end, so I wondered how an avowedly leftist person such as Zinn would fare.” NPR lived up to expectations.

The day after the NPR airing appeared,  FAIR posted an alert that expressed outrage at the segment and emphasized how, when William Buckley died in 2008, NPR aired no less than six segments, all of which featured glowing tributes to him, despite the fact that he accomplished little of intellectual significance. So, the argument goes, if NPR arranged things so that Buckley received only positive eulogies from his friends and admirers, why should Zinn be given the bipolar treatment? The FAIR article evoked many responses that were quickly posted and led to a general expression of outrage by his friends, colleagues, liberals and progressives: in other words, most of the good people left in the country were pissed.

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Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn passed away yesterday at age 87. He was a progressive historian who wrote many books but is best known for “A People’s History of the United States,” which tells the story of how the indigenous people were treated by the early European explorers and the Americans, including the exploitations and wars right up to the modern era. If you read that book, you cannot help but think we are doing a great injustice to our own humanity by celebrating “Columbus Day.” Columbus was a murderous slave trader with no redeeming characteristics, whose drive for gold obscured any capacity to see the beauty of the people and the newly discovered land he found himself in (but he never saw North America). For most progressives, this book serves as a kind of rite of passage and, for those of you yearning for more progressive literature, there is no better starting place than Howard Zinn’s book. But he also wrote many other books.

Howard  directly experienced war as a bombardier in a WW II bomber in the European theater. His conscience was ignited when his group was asked to bomb a French city that was rumored to still have Germans in it after most had already retreated from France. This experience forced him to confront a moral dilemma of whether one could justify indiscriminate bombing of a civilian area, particularly when the enemy in that region was probably ready to surrender. What was the purpose of that bombing? Eventually, through the GI bill,  Zinn obtained his Ph.D. in history and began his life as a college professor. His teaching of this alternative view of history, namely the history of what happened to the indigenous people as a result of European expansionism into the new world, has you wondering what kind of people were these early explorers? And what were the moral principles used by the Americans who committed genocide against the American Indians? But, he also explores the moral ground of Vietnam and the panoply of militarism we find ourselves in today.  Zinn’s book was recently adapted for a History Channel TV presentation “The People Speak,” with readings taken from his book that testify to the power of individuals when they are confronted with an oppressive government. His message is strong: Americans need to take back their government, stop the wars and killing and address the world as a friend, without searching under the rocks for enemies. Hopefully more young Americans will be exposed to Howard Zinn’s work and begin to question the false, politically motivated version of history that all of us received in our public school education. Actor Matt Damon grew up next to Howard Zinn in Boston and read his book on “The Peoples History”  as he was writing it. Damon was one of the producers who adapted parts of Zinn’s book for the History television program.

Howard Zinn was an activists activist. In 1967 he published Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. When Daniel Ellsberg was fleeing with the Pentagon Papers and needed a place to hide out, he went to Howard Zinn who took him in and shielded him until the papers could get published and put into the congressional record. Both men should have been awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for that one.

Zinn’s entire life as a professor was dedicated to speaking out against war and supporting civil rights and doing so by applying a moral metric to the dilemma. He always framed the issues that way. When Bush decided to invade Iraq, Zinn was opposed and said,

• “If Bush starts a war, he will be responsible for the lives lost, the children crippled, the terrorizing of millions of ordinary people, the American GIs not returning to their families. And all of us will be responsible for bringing that to a halt.

• Men who have no respect for human life or for freedom or justice have taken over this beautiful country of ours. It will be up to the American people to take it back.”

Howard Zinn wrote extensively for The Progressive. Several eulogies of Howard Zinn are posted  there by Elizabeth DiNovella and Matthew Rothschild. But, perhaps the best tribute is Amy Goodman’s interviews on Democracy Now with Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Alice Walker and Anthony Arnove.

If you are frustrated by the lack of progress on liberal issues, Howard Zinn had a special message for you:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Howard Zinn is one of the great irreplaceable giants in our progressive movement. But thankfully, his words will live on and hopefully his book will become the alternative Bible for addressing the moral dilemma of how we as a nation treat people. With his help, Americans might finally begin to learn their own history.  Howard Zinn’s website is here, where additional information on his life and books can be obtained. There are two Netflix documentaries on/by Howard Zinn in 2006 and 2004.

RFM

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