<<You claimed the criticisms I read had nothing to do with the value of Zinn's writings as history. I'm telling you they did. I read them. I saw what they said. As much fun as our arguments can be, I do not make up stuff just to contradict you.>>
Maybe I'm just not being clear about what my argument is here, Prince. Or maybe you're having so much fun with the joys of combat that you're not really paying attention. I am absolutely certain that as you read the criticisms of Zinn's work, they did in fact
deal with the purported errors and omissions that they alleged were damaging to the value of Zinn's writings as history. What I am trying to say is that the attacks are overblown (the example of whether or not the U.S. assistance that was undeniably given to OBL in Afghanistan came in the form of training or in some other form demonstrates to perfection the nit-picking triviality of these attacks) and that they are motivated not by some quest for perfection in our historians but from a desire, universal amongst the ruling classes who own the MSM, to ensure that Zinn will never receive any form of public recognition other than ridicule and disdain and that his ideas, which they deem to be subversive of their own wealth and privilege, be confined as tightly as possible through marginalization of the author.
Libyan involvement in the bombing of the cafe in Germany? Pffft! The US government causes at least that amount of carnage and mayhem on a daily basis. What evidence existed at the time of Libyan involvement? Who gives a shit? As a crime, it was of infinitesimal significance compared to the crimes of the U.S. military. Zinn is not a crime detective, and his conclusions in this one case as to what evidence existed for or against a suspect in a single bombing is totally insignificant in assessing the value of his work as an historian. Had he been writing a history of the Libyan government and its crimes committed outside its borders, then perhaps such an error (if in fact it was an error) would have been relevant to his abilities, but in the context in which these MSM drones are trying to impeach Zinn's work, it is laughable.
Prince responds to the following quote from MT:
<<MT: Furthermore, the two men were rivals. Schlesinger was a modern American historian himself, whose Pulitzer-prize-winning study of FDR and the New Deal stood in stark contrast to the worm's-eye-view of that same history espoused by Zinn.
Either Schlesinger had missed something in his book, or Zinn had fucked up by missing the essentials and focusing at their expense on the most minor and insignificant trivia for political rather than historical reasons. Now which of those two possibilities would have been the more attractive to Schlesinger?>>
Prince's response:
<<The problem here is that you're still assuming Zinn must be right and any criticism of him must therefore be wrong. The notion that Zinn might be wrong for the reasons his critics claim is something you're clearly not willing to allow. >>
You are dead wrong, 100% dead wrong. You must have totally missed the "either-or" in the very words you cut and pasted. So I coloured them for you, above. I don't assume anything. I just collect the facts and then figure the odds.
<<Now you're starting to remind me of a hard core, cult-of-Rand Objectivist who cannot admit that Ayn Rand could have ever been wrong.>>
Oh hell no. I can admit that Ayn Rand was wrong. She was wrong in just about every single thing she ever wrote. Not only wrong but crazy wrong. One of the easiest admissions I have ever had to make in my entire life.
<<You spent more space talking about it ["it" being my alleged resemblance to the denizens of the Rockwell site, which apparently has now morphed into my alleged resemblance to Ayn Rand cultists] than I did. Try following your own advice.>>
That was an admonishment, not a comparison. The admonishment naturally deserved a little more verbiage that the original comparison which I was admonishing. I do, naturally, follow my own advice, and now I hope that you will too. I am not comparing you to various weirdos who come to mind and I can only hope that in the future you will no longer be making such comparisons with me.
<<I made no such assumption [that a "progressive" label, hung round Zinn's critics' necks, would immunize them against imputation of impure motives and suspicion of bias]. >>
No? So then why bother to mention that those bozos were "progressives" and why the pains taken to characterize
Dissent as a "socialist" mag?
<<No, you accused them [Schlesinger and the unnamed
Dissent writers who allegedly trashed Zinn's work] of ulterior motives, but you proved nothing.>>
Actually, I proved that Schlesinger was about as likely to endorse Zinn's work as Obama was to invite the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to move into the White House as his resident spiritual adviser. Unfortunately, since the
Dissent writers who performed the alleged hack job on Zinn's writings were never named, I couldn't do the same for them. I limited myself to pointing out the fact that the alleged "socialist" mag was in fact the almost exclusive preserve of liberal Zionists and pointed out some very good reasons why Zionists, liberal or otherwise, react to Zinn's work more or less the same as vampires react to the sign of the cross.
<<Do you even pay attention to what you're saying? Excellent reasons? No. Your reasons are little more than partisan accusations, and notably you had to be pressed to even begin to address the criticisms themselves. You tried attacking the messengers and ignoring the message. >>
I don't want to back-track through this thread to see which points were made when. The fact is, they were made, and IIRC, relatively early on. Once made, they're facts or allegations you must deal with, and you're just wasting everyone's time by trying to make an issue out of when in the sequence of the argument they were raised.
<<You've made clear by your words that pretty much any criticism of Zenn's writings you would consider inherently corrupt. >>
No, that's the mistake you made in your earlier post, the one I criticized as leaving a logical hole big enough to accommodate an eighteen-wheeler. Because I raise two objections to Zinn's critics which you are unable to contradict, your answer then becomes that I would object to anything that any of Zinn's critics ever said about him. That is totally absurd. There is no historian on earth whose works would be beyond criticism. But criticism of an historian must be something more substantial than the inconsequential nit-picking that has been raised to date. The quality of the objections raised so far, as well as the nature of the critics, lead me to suspect that his work must be on pretty solid ground if this is the best his critics can do.
<<But feel free to prove me wrong by showing me criticisms of Zenn's work you would accept as legitimate.>>
Huh??? I'm
DEFENDING Zinn. I don't
HAVE any criticisms of his work. If you have any other objections to Zinn's work that you think are legitimate, by all means bring them forward.
<<Considering the evidence against dealt with facts and what Zinn said, and you dealt almost wholly in partisan and almost paranoid accusations, I'd say the evidence against is considerably more substantial than the smoke you're blowing.>>
Translation: I am right and you are wrong. My turn to reply. On second thought . . .
<<Wrong. What matters is what did Dissent and/or the writer(s) actually say, and did the criticisms themselves have any merit? You have failed so far to address that.>>
Really? I thought I said a lot about that, mainly focusing on the absolute triviality of the objections, but also in part on their veracity. Furthermore, it is NOT wrong to focus on motive, regardless of content, when the amount of significance to the objections is an issue and allegations of bias are made.
<<You're making up stuff to claim about what I said, but it's irrelevant for me comment on it? Um, no.>>
Bullshit, I paraphrased your characterization of Schlesinger and Dissent as anti-establishment figures whose natural bias would be to support Zinn if they could do so without violating their conscience or their professional reputations. In that context, there is very little difference between "anti-establishment" and "progressive," either would be equally likely to support Zinn's work and equally likely to have no pro-establishment bias leading them to oppose Zinn and his work. Characterizations which, as I demonstrated, were both highly misleading.
<<Anyway, no one claimed anyone was an unimpeachable source for anything. You've built up a strawman and knocked it down.>>
Strawman, my ass. If you didn't intend to portray Schlesinger and
Dissent as unimpeachable sources of anti-Zinn criticism, you certainly were intending, with the misleading labels you attempted to pin on them, to significantly diminish the credibility of any imputation of bias that might be leveled against them.
<<And again, what matters is what is the criticism of Zinn, and whether or not it has merit. >>
No shit, Sherlock.
<<You have attempted to dismiss all the criticism with what amount to little more than ad hominem attacks. >>
No, not "all criticism." Just the petty, nit-picking criticism I've seen so far. And when bias is alleged, ad hominem issues become central to the determination of bias. Even assuming the criticism was correct, why were such nit-picking inconsequential points raised against Zinn? Presumably, an opinion implicit in the criticism itself is that the critic believes the points to be of importance in evaluating the work of an historian, that they are NOT "nit-picking, insignificant, etc. It's important for the reader to know whether the source is as impartial as it is presumed to be.
Ad hominem information is essential to a proper consideration of that question.
<<All you've got is a classic ad hominem. You've got nothing, Michael.>>
It's a lot more than that, Prince. I've got the opinion that the criticisms are trivial and inconsequential, and in some instances, maybe not even factually correct. I've got the fact that until now there are no critics of Zinn produced who are neither MSM writers or "progressives" who nevertheless, and despite an absence of MSM ties, have very good reason to make sure that Zinn's opinions are confined as tightly as possible to the smallest number of readers and TV viewers and I've got the fact that as far as I can see there is no public critic of Zinn who is not tied either to the MSM or to the Zionist cause.
Furthermore, I don't need to defend Zinn as the greatest historian ever to come down the pike. The title of the thread says it all: Shunning Zinn. If Zinn isn't the greatest historian the world has ever seen, if he's just a middle-of-the-road historian in terms of accuracy, judgment, insight, etc., like all the other historians, my point is that his work seems to have come in for way more than its fair share of criticism, and particularly for a torrent of MSM abuse. The question that has to has to be asked is why? Why this torrent of abuse, nit-picking criticism and universal denunciation in the MSM? His is a unique historical POV. It sheds perspective on a lot of things that are going on as we speak. Its absence, IMHO, is responsible for the kind of pure historical ignorance that seems to infect the most right-wing of the posters in this club. Its absence is what permits the kind of blindly jingoistic opinions about the great virtue and benevolence of the U.S.A., its unique and invaluable contribution to the progress of humanity, etc., all the bullshit that prevents the average American from ever gaining a balanced perspective on his own country and its place in the world, his own country and how he fares as a citizen in it, and of course the real dynamics of governance in his country.
