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Historian Howard Zinn ascended the stage at renowned Faneuil Hall in Boston on Patriot's Day, the Massachusetts holiday commemorating the start of the American Revolution. The "shot heard round the world," the first shot of that revolution, was fired April 19, 1775, in Concord, Mass.
He spoke about patriotism: "What is patriotism, and what is not? Who is patriotic, and who is not?"
"Patriotism is about dissent. It's about criticism and civil disobedience," Zinn began. Not far from Faneuil Hall, Henry David Thoreau, born in Concord, built a little hut on Walden Pond. Thoreau wrote "Civil Disobedience," which profoundly influenced Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Zinn continued, "He was arrested for not paying his tax because he was protesting the Mexican-American War in the way there are tax resisters today for protesting the war in Iraq." Thoreau went to jail. While there, his mentor, the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, is said to have asked Thoreau, "Henry, what are you doing in there?" Thoreau replied, "What are you doing out there?"
Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," with well more than 1.5 million copies sold, is essential reading for anyone hoping to truly understand the U.S. in its current role as sole superpower. He tells the story of America, from the bottom up. Zinn, 84, with a grandfatherly smile and self-deprecating wit, defiantly smashes the icons of American history, exposing the myths that are so often invoked in defense of bad policy.
Zinn continued his homage to patriots, like Helen Keller. Everyone is taught that she was deaf and blind, yet went on to great success. What the textbooks don't tell children, Zinn says, is about Keller's deep-seated political beliefs.
"Helen Keller was a patriot. She was a radical, an educator, an agitator, a socialist. She spoke at Carnegie Hall against war, supported the labor unions of her day. She refused to cross a picket line at a theater that was showing a play about her."
See more stories tagged with: patriotism, war in iraq, gun violence
Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!
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