Jaclyn English

Howard Zinn, a renowned historian most famous for his best-selling book “A People’s History of the United States,” packed a Forcina lecture hall last Wednesday evening with students, faculty and other guests waiting to hear his lecture titled “Bringing Democracy Alive.”

The lecture was sponsored by the Progressive Student Alliance and several co-sponsors.

Zinn, an energetic 84-year-old who earned his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University, spoke passionately and with a wry sense of humor on the misconceptions about democracy in our society, his words frequently interrupted with laughter and applause from the audience.

Societies tend to be defined as either totalitarian or democratic, Zinn said, but democracy is defined too easily in this country.

“The United States is not at one end of the spectrum,” he said. “We cannot call ourselves a democracy so long as the government can mislead the people and send them into war. . Foreign policy certainly is not made democratically.”

The media and press, Zinn said, are also undemocratic. He cited the Vietnam War when no major newspaper in the country called for a withdrawal in spite of public opinion.

“The media are controlled by basically the same wealthy elite that control the government,” Zinn said. The attacks on Sept. 11 also produced a wave of media patriotism.

Zinn quoted a statement by The Washington Post that was printed after former Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his speech on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, a speech Zinn called “the greatest assemblage of lies ever delivered to the United Nations.”

The Post said, “After Powell’s talk, it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.”

The people of the United States can’t depend on the media or on the two-party system, Zinn said. He marvelled at how children are told in junior high school that there are one-party states and then there are two-party states such as the United States.

“If the second party has fundamentally the same policies with slight differences . then you don’t really have a two-party system,” Zinn said. “When you go to the polls every four years, you choose between ‘A’ and ‘A prime.’”

He also spoke about how Americans learn in school that there are three branches of government with checks and balances so “nothing can go wrong.” However, “the only real checks and balances are the people themselves,” Zinn said.

“When you grasp the reality of the situation and understand that you can’t depend on the government, press or opposition party, you learn you have to depend on yourself, the citizenry,” Zinn said. He cited the labor movement and the civil rights movement as times of change when the people took matters into their own hands.

“People in power only hold power so long as we obey them,” Zinn said. “We can’t (view) power as something fixed and unbreakable.”

He said people are often labeled unpatriotic when they speak out because patriotism has come to be associated with supporting the government.

However, Zinn cited author Mark Twain, who said Americans should get their idea of patriotism from the Declaration of Independence, which distinguishes between the government and the people.

The Declaration says the government should ensure certain rights; otherwise it is the right of the people to abolish the government.