Cross Examining American Ideology with Howard Zinn

This is a record of the sections I have bracketed, and the comments I have written in the margins, of my library copy of Zinn's Declaration of Independence. I have to return it to the Grand Rapids library tomorrow so this was my last chance to preserve my thoughts and the best quotes! I may expand on comments later.

"It appears to me more proper to go to the truth of the matter than to its imagination... for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather learn to bring about his own ruin than his preservation." -Machiavelli (10)

"Japan was ready to end the war, so long as it was not unconditional surrender." (24)

"For this end, the means were among the most awful yet devised by human beings - burning people alive, maiming them horribly, and leaving them with radiation sickness, which would kill them slowly and with great pain." (26)

"I have never been persuaded that such violence, whether of an angry black man or a hate-filled trooper or of a dutiful Air Force officer, was the result of some natural instinct." (33)

"By far the most important characteristic of human beings is that we have and exercise moral judgement and are not at the mercy of our hormones and genes" -PW Medawar (36)

Krista Tippett: Effective Compassion through Faith

Krista Tippett is the host of the radio program Speaking of Faith, broadcast weekly on NPR since 2003. In her conversations with people of all faiths and occupations, Christian and Hindu, novelist and physicist, Tippett aims to better understand the way that belief and spirituality affect our society, worldview, and personal well-being.

In the two books she has published in the last few years, certain themes stand out that define her own view of religion and its place in human life. In particular, Tippett understands that the positive impact that spiritual traditions have on the world rests firmly on their ability to transform the heart and the way we live in relation to one another:

The context of most religious virtue is relationship--practical love in families and communities... These qualities of religion should enlarge, not narrow, our public conversation about all of the important issues before us. They should reframe it.

Throughout her two books, Speaking of Faith and Einstein's God, Tippett discusses faith from a perspective shared by the Acton Institute: Human suffering cannot be eliminated through government programs or by reforming political or economic structure. But our spiritual traditions can address complex problems on their deepest level. The religious sensibility inspires virtue, and, even in the midst of great suffering, it can instill hope through an insistence on human dignity and potential.