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.
"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)
"Ordinary people, simply doing their
jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process." -Milgram (38)
"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion." -C.P. Snow (38)
Me: Even authority can be dangerous. Non-coercive authority.
The Forest People, by Colin Turnbull
Me: Power is power, earned or unearned, and it tends to corrupt. (40)
"Because if wars are only intermittent - if there are periods of war and periods of peace and if there are nations that go to war and other nations that don't - then it is unreasonable to attribute war to something as universal as human nature." (41)
From The Warriors: "Last night I lay awake and thought of all the inhumanity of it, the beastliness of the war... I thought of Plato's phrase about the wise man caught in an evil time who refuses to participate in the crimes of his fellow citizens, but hides behind a wall until the storm is past. And this morning, when I rose, tired and distraught from bed, I knew that in order to survive this time I must love more. There is no other way."
"Our powerful impulses for freedom and community come from deep, dependable, internal drives, often deflected or overcome by terrible pressures in our culture, but never extinguished... I am arguing here for holding on to certain basic values - and insisting that whatever facts you discover in history may change your means without dislodging your ends"
Me: YES. End goal = justice, through freedom and community cooperation. (49)
"The definition of 'important', of course, depends on one's values." (51)
Me: Coercive = unjust (52)
"I want my readers to think twice about our traditional heroes, to reexamine what we cherish (technical competence) and what we ignore (human consequences). I want them to think about how easily we accept conquest and murder because it furthers 'progress'. Mass murder for 'a good cause' is one of the sicknesses of our time."
Me: *human consequences (57)
"There is still another kind of historical bias that can mislead us, and that is the tendency of the culture to emphasize historical trivia, to learn facts for their own sake. The result of this is to encourage a flat, valueless interest in past facts that have no great significance in the betterment of the human condition, but that are simply 'interesting'. The interest served, however, is that of diverting us from the truly important uses of history, thus making history, literally, a diversion." (58)
"It is the citizenry, rather than the government, that is the ultimate source of power and the locomotive that pulls the train of government in the direction of equality and justice" (62).
"We do need to learn history, the kind that does not put its main emphasis on knowing presidents and statutes and Supreme Court decisions, but inspires a new generation to resist the madness of governments trying to carve the world and our minds into their spheres of influence." (66)
"War cannot be humanized. It can only be abolished" -Einstein (70)
Me: Agreed.
"'Why,' I asked my friend, 'are you flying missions, risking your life, in a war you don't believe in?' His answer astonished me. 'I'm here to speak to people like you.'"
Me: Wow. (81)
"Whether the mask is labelled Fascism, Democracy, or Dictatorship of the Proletariat, our great adversary remains the Apparatus - the bureaucracy, the police, the military... No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this Apparatus, and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves an in others." -Simone Weil (101)
"I have always held that, if he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions." -Albert Camus (103)
Me: Let's talk about manipulation.
"Perhaps the worst consequence of World War II is that it kept alive the idea that war could be just." (104)
"It is the great challenge of our time: How to achieve justice, with struggle, but without war." (105)
Me: Agreed.
"Surely, peace, stability, and order are desirable, Chaos and violence are not. But stability and order are not the only desirable conditions of social life. There is also justice, meaning the fair treatment of all human beings, the equal right of all people to freedom and prosperity. Absolute obedience to law may bring order temporarily, but it may not bring justice. And when it does not, those treated unjustly may protest, may rebel, may cause disorder, as the American revolutionaries did in the eighteenth century, as antislavery people did in the nineteenth century, as Chinese students did in this century, and as working people going on strike have done in every country, across the centuries. Are we not more obligated to achieve justice than to obey the law?"
Me: No. We are. (109)
"A code of law is more easily deified than a flesh-and-blood ruler." (111)
"If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, not as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles." (118)
Me: Law should only protect against injustice (unjust actions, not unjust inaction) (122)
"If we are to avoid majority tyranny over oppressed minorities, we must give a dissident minority a way of expressing the fullness of its grievance." (123)
"The ultimate test is not law, but justice." (128)
Me: What laws describe justice?
"Law and Justice are from time to time inevitably in conflict. That is because law is a general rule... while justice is the fairness of this precise case under all its circumstances." -Wigmore (138)
"Can a nuclear weapon be considered the same kind of property as a desk, or a stove? As long as our country sees nuclear weapons as property to defend and protect, more sacred than the lives they will destroy - what is private property?" -Martin Holladay (142)
"What is economic justice? What are the proper goals of a good economic system? What is the reality of wealth, poverty, and class distinction in this country? And how do we get from this reality to something close to justice?"
Me: The only way to a just end, is through just means. (150)
"The philosopher Robert Nozick has argued that... no one should take them away for any purpose, however desperate the need."
Me: That's right, but he is not saying that the wealth holder should not give.
"Truth is it shouldn't matter how the rich got that way. If people have fundamental needs that are matters of life and death, why should we not, by taxation, take from people who will not suffer as a result of the taking, to meet those needs?"
Me: Because if such a transfer would in fact not hurt the wealth holder, then the wealth holder should be peacefully convinced to voluntarily contribute to the needy. People who want to give should give - people who do not want to give must not be forced to give. (164)
Me: A person earns income based on the value that others place on the services he or she provides. (165)
Me: Zinn: Coercion can be justified to save lives. (166)
"The great worldwide interest in socialism is due, I believe, to what people have seen happen in capitalism - that the profit motive has had some terrible human consequences. People turned to socialism because of the belief that human beings - once their essential needs are taken care of - can be motivated to work and create by considerations other than monetary profit: self-respect, the respect of others, compassion for others, and community spirit."
Me: Must be voluntary. What about trade? (172)
"I find that social idealism is most necessary precisely in an era of revolution... Without the participation of this idealism, a revolution - and all of life - would turn into a dry, arithmetical problem of distributing material wealth, a problem the solution of which demands blind cruelty and streams of blood, a problem which, arousing savage instincts, kills man's social spirit, as we shall see in our time." -Maxim Gorky (273)
Me: Wow.
"My own refusal to adopt either Soviet socialism or American capitalism as models of justice and freedom led me, while participating in the movements of the sixties, to read more and more about the philosophy of anarchism."
Me: Foundation of the freedom philosophy: means are more important than ends. Action > object. (275)
"What attracted me to anarchism was its rejection of any bullying authority."
Me: Bullying is always a rotten means. (275)
"The struggle for justice should never be abandoned on the ground that it is hopeless... No cold calculation of the balance of power should deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just... Massive violence, whether in war or internal upheaval, cannot be justified by any end, however noble, because no outcome is sure. Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desirable, are uncertain, and the means are horrible and certain, those means must not be employed."
Me: Rawls. Predicament of American welfare for some part. (279)
"Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation." -Vatican II (288)
Me: Agreed.
"All of us face an enormous responsibility: How to achieve justice without massive violence."
Me: Need the word "massive", Howard? Exactly.
"The poor must rebel against their poverty and redistribute the wealth of the rich. But that must be done without the violence of war."
Me: And without coercion. You can bully the rich too. (289)
"Nonviolent direct action is inextricably related to democracy. Violence to the point of terrorism is the desperate tactic of tiny groups who are incapable of building a mass base of popular support. Governments much prefer violence committed by disciplined armies under their control, rather than adopt tactics of nonviolence, which would require them to entrust power to large numbers of citizens, who might then use it to threaten the elites' authority."
Me: Straight up. (295)
"The philosopher Bernard Williams in his book Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, is dubious that we can derive our values from the pure thought of philosophy, that there is some rational system of thought to tell us what is right and what is wrong. But this does not leave us hanging helplessly in an amoral atmosphere. There is something inside us that is a better guide than cool philosophical analysis. And we can help this along, he thinks, not through abstract ethical theories, but by taking a closer, deeper look at the world around us, its history and its present characteristics." (308)
Me: YES.
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