Declarations Of Independence
Cross-Examining American Ideology
Author: Howard Zinn
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Date: 1990
ISBN: 0-060-92108-0
Table of Contents
One Introduction: American Ideology .....................................................................1
Two Machiavellian Realism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Means and Ends .....................7
Three Violence and Human Nature ........................................................................27
Four The Use and Abuse of History........................................................................41
Five Just and Unjust War ......................................................................................57
Six Law and Justice...............................................................................................89
Seven Economic Justice: The American Class System .........................................121
Eight Free Speech: Second Thoughts on the First Amendment ............................151
Nine Representative Government: The Black Experience ....................................189
Ten Communism and Anti-communism ...............................................................210
Eleven The Ultimate Power .................................................................................225
One
Introduction: American Ideology
The idea, which entered Western consciousness several centuries ago, that black people are
less than human, made possible the Atlantic slave trade, during which perhaps 40 mil ion
people died. Beliefs about racial inferiority, whether applied to blacks or Jews or Arabs or
Orientals, have led to mass murder.
The idea, presented by political leaders and accepted by the American public in 1964, that
communism in Vietnam was a threat to our "national security" led to policies that cost a
mil ion lives, including those of 55,000 young Americans.
The belief, fostered in the Soviet Union, that "socialism" required a ruthless policy of farm col ectivization, as wel as the control of dissent, brought about the deaths of countless
peasants and large numbers of political prisoners.
Other ideas—leave the poor on their own ("laissez-faire") and help the rich ("economic growth")—have led the U.S. government for most of its history to subsidize corporations
while neglecting the poor, thus permitting terrible living and working conditions and
incalculable suffering and death. In the years of the Reagan presidency, "laissez-faire"
meant budget cutting for family care, which led to high rates of infant mortality in city
ghettos.
We can reasonably conclude that how we think is not just mildly interesting, not just a
subject for intel ectual debate, but a matter of life and death.
If those in charge of our society—politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and
television—can dominate our ideas, they wil be secure in their power. They wil not need
soldiers patrol ing the streets. We wil control ourselves.
Because force is held in reserve and the control is not complete, we can cal ourselves a
"democracy." True, the openings and the flexibility make such a society a more desirable
place to live. But they also create a more effective form of control. We are less likely to
object if we can feel that we have a "pluralist" society, with two parties instead of one, three branches of government instead of one-man rule, and various opinions in the press instead
of one official line.1
A close look at this pluralism shows that it is very limited. We have the kinds of choices that
are given in multiple-choice tests, where you can choose a, b, c, or d. But e, f, g, and b are not even listed.
And so we have the Democratic and Republican parties (choose a or b), but no others are real y tolerated or encouraged or financed. Indeed, there is a law limiting the national y
televised presidential debates to the two major parties.
We have a "free press," but big money dominates it; you can choose among Time,
Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. On television, you can choose among NBC, CBS, and ABC. There is a dissident press, but it does not have the capital of the great media
chains and cannot get the rich corporate advertising, and so it must strain to reach smal
numbers of people. There is public television, which is occasional y daring, but also
impoverished and most often cautious.
We have three branches of government, with "checks and balances," as we were taught in
junior high school. But one branch of government (the presidency) gets us into wars and
the other two (Congress and the Supreme Court) go sheepishly along.
1
There is the same limited choice in public policy. During the Vietnam War, the argument for a long time was between those who wanted a total bombing of Indochina and those who
wanted a limited bombing. The choice of withdrawing from Vietnam altogether was not
offered. Daniel El sberg, working for Henry Kissinger in 1969, was given the job of drawing
a list of alternative policies on Vietnam. As one possibility on his long list he suggested total
withdrawal from the war. Kissinger looked at the possibilities and crossed that one off
before giving the list to President Richard Nixon.
In debates on the military budget there are heated arguments about whether to spend $300
bil ion or $200 bil ion. A proposal to spend $100 bil ion (thus making $200 bil ion available
for human needs) is like the e or/ in a multiple-choice test—it is missing. To propose zero bil ion makes you a candidate for a mental institution.
On the question of prisons there is debate on how many prisons we should have. But the
idea of abolishing prisons is too outrageous even to be discussed.
We hear argument about bow much the elderly should have to pay for health care, but the
idea that they should not have to pay anything, indeed, that no one should have to pay for health care, is not up for debate.
Thus we grow up in a society where our choice of ideas is limited and where certain ideas
dominate: We hear them from our parents, in the schools, in the churches, in the
newspapers, and on radio and television. They have been in the air ever since we learned to
walk and talk. They constitute an American ideology— that is, a dominant pattern of ideas.
Most people accept them, and if we do, too, we are less likely to get into trouble.
The dominance of these ideas is not the product of a conspiratorial group that has devilishly
plotted to implant on society a particular point of view. Nor is it an accident, an innocent
result of people thinking freely. There is a process of natural (or, rather unnatural)
selection, in which certain orthodox ideas are encouraged, financed, and pushed forward by
the most powerful mechanisms of our culture. These ideas are preferred because they are
safe; they don't threaten established wealth or power.
For instance:
"Be realistic; this is the way things are; there's no point thinking about how
things should be."
&nbs
p; "People who teach or write or report the news should be objective; they
should not try to advance their own opinions."
"There are unjust wars, but also just wars."
"If you disobey the law, even for a good cause, you should accept your
punishment."
"If you work hard enough, you'l make a good living. If you are poor, you
have only yourself to blame."
"Freedom of speech is desirable, but not when it threatens national security."
"Racial equality is desirable, but we've gone far enough in that direction."
"Our Constitution is our greatest guarantee of liberty and justice."
"The United States must intervene from time to time in various parts of the
world with military power to stop communism and promote democracy."
"If you want to get things changed, the only way is to go through the proper
channels."
2
"We need nuclear weapons to prevent war."
"There is much injustice in the world but there is nothing that ordinary
people, without wealth or power, can do about it."
These ideas are not accepted by al Americans. But they are believed widely enough and
strongly enough to dominate our thinking. And as long as they do, those who hold wealth
and power in our society wil remain secure in their control.
In the year 1984 Forbes magazine, a leading periodical for high finance and big business,
drew up a list of the wealthiest individuals in the United States. The top 400 people had
assets totaling $60 bil ion. At the bottom of the population there were 60 mil ion people who
had no assets at al .
Around the same time, the economist Lester Thurow estimated that 482 very wealthy
individuals control ed (without necessarily owning) over $2,000 bil ion ($2 tril ion).
Consider the influence of such a very rich class—with its inevitable control of press, radio,
television, and education—on the thinking of the nation.2
Dissident ideas can stil exist in such a situation, but they wil be drowned in criticism and
made disreputable, because they are outside the acceptable choices. Or they may be
al owed to survive in the corners of the culture—emaciated, but alive—and presented as
evidence of our democracy, our tolerance, and our pluralism.
A sophisticated system of control that is confident of its power can permit a measure of
dissidence. However, it watches its critics careful y, ready to overwhelm them, intimidate
them, and even suppress them should they ever seriously threaten the system, or should
the establishment, in a state of paranoia, think they do. If readers think I am exaggerating with words such as "watching … overwhelm … suppress … paranoia, " they should read the volumes of reports on the FBI and the CIA published in 1975 by the Senate Select
Committee on Government Operations.
However, government surveil ance and threats are the exception. What normal y 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 natural y 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.
That is what I want to do in this book.
I wil be dealing with political ideas. When political ideas are analyzed—issues like violence
in human nature, realism and idealism, the best forms of government or whether there
should be government at al , a citizen's obligation to the state, and the proper distribution of
wealth in society—we are in the area of political theory, or political philosophy. There is a
list of famous political thinkers who are traditional y used to initiate discussion on these
long-term problems, including Plato, Aristotle, Machiavel i, Hobbes, Locke, Madison,
Rousseau, Marx, and Freud.
3
There are endless arguments that go on in academic circles about what Plato or Machiavel i or Rousseau or Marx real y meant. Although I taught political theory for twenty years, I
don't real y care about that. I am interested in these thinkers when it seems to me their
ideas are stil alive in our time and can be used to il uminate a problem. Readers wanting to
know more about some of these writers and the literature wil find references in the
endnotes of this book. I wil assume that our job is not to interpret the great theorists, but
to think for ourselves.
I wil go back and forth from theory to historical fact (including very recent events), hoping
to clarify issues of urgent concern to our time. I wil not be too respectful of chronology, but
wil wander back and forth across the centuries, from Machiavel i to Kissinger, from Socrates
in an Athenian prison to a Catholic priest in a Connecticut jail, making whatever connections
I find useful.
There is in orthodox thinking a great dependence on experts. Because modern technological
society has produced a breed of experts who understand technical matters that bewilder the
rest of us, we think that in matters of social conflict, which require moral judgments, we
must also turn to experts.3
There are two false assumptions about experts. One is that they see more clearly and think
more intel igently than ordinary citizens. Sometimes they do, sometimes not. The other
assumption is that these experts have the same interests as ordinary citizens, want the
same things, hold the same values, and, therefore, can be trusted to make decisions for al
of us.
To depend on great thinkers, authorities, and experts is, it seems to me, a violation of the
spirit of democracy. Democracy rests on the idea that, except for technical details for which
experts may be useful, the important decisions of society are within the capability of
ordinary citizens. Not only can ordinary people make decisions about these issues, but they ought to, because citizens understand their own interests more clearly than any experts.
In John Le Carre's novel The Russia House, a dissident Russian scientist is assured that his secret document has been entrusted "to the authorities. People of discretion. Experts." He becomes angry:
I do not like experts. They are our jailers. I despise experts more than
anyone on earth … . They solve nothing! They are servants of whatever
system hires them. They perpetuate it. When we are tortured, we shal be
tortured by experts. When we are hanged, experts wil hang us … . When the
world is destroyed, it wil be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of
its experts and the superior ignorance of its bureaucrats.4
We are expected to believe that great thinkers—experts—are objective, that they have no
axes to grind and no biases, and that they make pure intel ectual judgments. However, the
minds of al human beings are powerful y influenced (though not total y bound) by their
backgrounds, by whether they are rich or poor, male or female, black or white or Asian, in
positions of power, or in lowly circumstances. Even scien
tists making "scientific"
observations know that what they see wil be affected by their position. 5
Why should we cherish "objectivity," as if ideas were innocent, as if they don't serve one interest or another? Surely, we want to be objective if that means tel ing the truth as we
see it, not concealing information that may be embarrassing to our point of view. But we
don't want to be objective if it means pretending that ideas don't play a part in the social
struggles of our time, that we don't take sides in those struggles.
4
Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral. In a world already moving in certain directions, where wealth and power are already distributed in certain ways, neutrality means accepting the
way things are now. It is a world of clashing interests—war against peace, nationalism
against internationalism, equality against greed, and democracy against elitism—and it
seems to me both impossible and undesirable to be neutral in those conflicts.
Writing this book, I do not claim to be neutral, nor do I want to be. There are things I value,
and things I don't. I am not going to present ideas objectively if that means I don't have
strong opinions on which ideas are right and which are wrong. I wil try to be fair to
opposing ideas by accurately representing them. But the reader should know that what
appear here are my own views of the world as it is and as it should be.
I do want to influence the reader. But I would like to do this by the strength of argument
and fact, by presenting ideas and ways of looking at issues that are outside the orthodox. I
am hopeful that given more possibilities people wil come to wiser conclusions.
In my years of teaching, I never listened to the advice of people who said that a teacher
should be objective, neutral, and professional. Al the experiences of my life, growing up on
the streets of New York, becoming a shipyard worker at the age of eighteen, enlisting in the
Air Force in World War II, participating in the civil rights movement in the Deep South, cried
out against that.
It seems to me we should make the most of the fact that we live in a country that, although
control ed by wealth and power, has openings and possibilities missing in many other
places. The control ers are gambling that those openings wil pacify us, that we wil not