Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology by Howard Zinn

Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology Reviews

• 
  Lobstergirl

  A lovely book. I took 6 pages of notes.
  
  This captures the essence of Zinn:
  
  “Why should we cherish “objectivity”, as if ideas were innocent, as if they don’t serve on interest or another? Surely, we want to be objective if that means telling 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.
  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.”
  
• 
  JP

  This was my first foray into personal reading for academic enrichment, and it literally changed my perspective on the world.
  
  This book, like his sweeping People's History - which I have yet to read - is a very compelling, very provocative look at some of the American mythos, but unlike that book, is much more pointed in its arguments. Is Capitalism good? Well, most people in America say "yes". I also say "yes", but not without acknowledging that it can have devastating effects on everyone involved in the system (or, for that matter, excluded from the system). It's a good thing to keep in mind while you listen to blowhards preaching from their soapbox that capitalism made us the best country in the world and that anyone who doesn't like pure, free-market capitalism doesn't like freedom. If you think capitalism is the be-all, end-all, I recommend this book.
  
  Is it ever justified to go to war? Well... I thought so. It's hard to think, as a 19 year old boy (which I was when I read this book), that WWII, the fight against the true "Axis of Evil" might not have been necessary. It was hard for Zinn, too. Howard Zinn was a bombadier in WWII, dropping bombs out of airplanes for the forces of democracy; or so he thought. Zinn's powerful realization that war is never just; that people never deserve to be slaughtered like they were in the total war that was WWII; that the picture of peace as weak is a form of control... He shares that powerful realization through this book. If you grew up thinking that the "free world" needed us, and that we acted justly in WWII, I recommend this book.
  
  Zinn is a communist, and he makes no point in denying that. What he DOES deny is that he ever loved the USSR. He points out the inconsistencies and perversions to which communism has been subjected over the course of the 20th century. If you've ever thought that communism is synonymous with the PRC or the USSR, I recommend this book.
  
  Zinn tackles our founding myths. He looks at how the government was crafted by the white man, for the white man. The first amendment makes sense until you start to unpack some of the context in which it was established. Some of this will be a review for Americans who have grown up with modern US history curricula focusing on slavery and the constitutional limitations of blacks, but some will be surprised to learn about the red-lining and continued discrimination which still plagues our "post-racial" society. If you think we're a force for freedom and democracy in the world, I recommend this book.
  
  I haven't read it in a while, and reviewing this book now has brought back some memories that I hadn't clearly remembered before. I'm gonna have to sit down and re-read it again.
  
  Entertainment: 1 Star
  Education: 1 Star
  Thesis: 1 Star
  Readability: 1 Star
  Inspiration: 1 Star
• 
  Rocky

  Damngus. What a banger. A very critical and insightful look at American Ideology. One of those books that makes you realize you didn’t learn anything in high school history class. From the atomic bomb, to untold labor struggles, to the myth of 1st amendment. Even has a sprinkling of pro-anarchist sentiment which I love to see. I feel like it was convoluted at spots, and some of the examples were brought up and dismissed too quickly for them to have any lasting impact. So not 5/5. But very close.
• 
  Andrew Marr

  A clearly written, trenchant & disturbing analysis about how the "freedoms" of US citizens (not to speak of the citizens of other countries) actually work out, or don't work out, except sporadically and unpredictably. This is a call for all of us to take responsibility for our lives and for our country. As a religious person, I see the thoughts of this book leading to deeper issues. First of all, the discipline of genuine peacefulness in witnessing to the truth. Much of this book shows how difficult it is for people in power to willingly grant freedom to other people if it requires any hint of self-sacrifice for the sake of others. All of us have to examine ourselves very deeply about this.
• 
  Mike

  Some thoughts from America's pre-eminent revisionist. I admire his conviction, despite the fact he's a communist.
• 
  Twilight O. ☭

  Friedrich Nietzsche famously proclaimed that we ought to philosophize with hammers; Howard Zinn wrote history with one.
  
  By philosophizing with a hammer, Nietzsche intended to test society's idols, to see which were sound and which were hollow. In Nietzsche's hands, the hammer is a musical instrument. In the hands of Zinn, the hammer is a sledge, used to break up the shoddy ideological foundation on which society bases itself. In truth, the essay collection is a form perhaps more fitting to Zinn's ambitions and practice than the history textbook. A People's History worked towards a comprehensive retelling of American history while this book takes aim at its central mythological pillars. As a result, the effect of each book is rather different. A People's History often feels like an exercise in moralizing, Declarations of Independence is fierce.
  
  I don't mean to set this up as a hipster alternative to the more famous text, although I'll admit I have fun in framing things that way. They're different books with different aims and the World is better off with both of them in it. My only point is that I know plenty of people who've read a People's History and loaded up on facts to guilt trip people with, but Declarations of Independence prepares the reader to take those facts and put them to good use. They work rather well as companion pieces, it's simply that I think that Declarations of Independence is the more crucial half.
  
  To be blunt, A People's History makes you feel good. Sure, it makes you feel bad about American history, but it feels incredible for you having read it. You feel as though you've stumbled onto hidden truth, which in a way you have. Armed with this information, however, it's very easy to simply get up on a moral high horse, especially if you're well-meaning but well-to-do middle-class white kid like so many of Zinn's readers are. Declarations of Independence, however, can't be read as anything but a call to action. More than just a call to action, it's a destruction of every possible ideological tenant that might hinder that call to action.
  
  There are, of course, oversights and weaknesses, not to mention places where I simply disagree. The book was written in the early 90's and it shows. Zinn talks very little about queer issues and trans people don't appear whatsoever. I personally take issue with Zinn's democratic socialist outlook; I'm a radical through and through. Zinn's calls to action are powerful but not informed by a clear theory of revolutionary subjectivity, a predictable result of his democratic socialism. There are other things I could mention to, but... I'm not going to. Declarations of Independence makes to pretenses to being the final word on any of the subjects it tackles. Rather, it intends to be the starting place. No other book I've read so effectively targets and dismantles the various justifications for why the world is the way it is today, and if that's not a justification for putting it on your bookshelf I don't know what is.
• 
  Kitap

  Revisionist historian Howard Zinn, most well known for his monumental People’s History of the United States, here turns his crystal-clear lens of historical criticism to the cherished myths of American politics. After first defining “American ideology” as “a dominant pattern of ideas” in whose company belong such notions as “democracy,” “national security,” “free press,” etc., Zinn proceeds to examine each of these tenets in more detail.
  
  His methods are historical, in that he looks to the past for concrete examples of American political activity that can support or invalidate the self-accolades of the American body politic. His goal is political, however, in that he reveals American political ideology to be at its best, simply hollow rhetoric, and at the worst, pernicious double-speak. He argues persuasively that the democratic republic whose birth certificate (the Declaration of Independence) includes a clause supporting its own execution has been replaced by a national power which does everything (and anything) in order “to maintain the state.”
  
  Professor Zinn makes powerful arguments and reveals an abundance of historical data to challenge many cherished American institutions. “Free speech” is examined in the light of various political machinations including the Sedition Act of 1798 and the Espionage Act (under whose provisions Eugene V. Debs was imprisoned for opposing WWI). Not even the sacred cow of World War II (the “Good War”) is safe from Zinn’s cleaver, which reduces it to a very satisfying porterhouse of political power-mongering and governmental greed, as he argues against the very notion of a “just war.”
  
  Provocative and compassionate and very, very necessary in today’s world of sound-bite media where political analysis is replaced with marketing surveys and the content of discussion has given way to meaningless aphorisms of received wisdom and grunts of derision. The Wizard does not want us to look behind the curtain, and here Howard Zinn stands smiling, with the pull-cord in his hands.
• 
  Philip Thomas

  This is a good book. I used it for my research paper on the American Class System. It is a good resource for reviewing the original intentions of the founding forefathers. Regardless of some racist points of view, their onsite has allowed us to evolve and become a free nation. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness is evolving. It is evolving because of the power given to the people. The government has always needed to be reminded of what these documents originally meant. The beauty is the foresight that the rights will need to be changed, that amendments will need to be ratified and perfected. One of the rights I want to change in my lifetime, is that education should be free for all people and equal in quality for all races and all socio economic classes.
• 
  AJ

  4.5 stars
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  Howard Zinn was an amazing person, and I'm glad I still have some works of his to keep discovering. I love how this book points out the hypocrisy of mainstream (Go USA, Capitalism Rules!) rhetoric. The media isn't unbiased, there are no just wars, democracy in our country is reserved for the rich, and the first amendment is only valid if you have money and support the status quo.
• 
  Aren LeBrun

  Classic Zinn material. If you’re familiar with A People’s History, there’s nothing much new to see here. Some of the chapters have been published in other anthologies, such as Howard Zinn: On War, which I found more useful than this. But for newcomers it’s a valuable entry into his more essential work.
• 
  Jeremy S

  This book wasn't bad. The only thing was it seemed to take me forever to read it because the words were small and it kind of took me all over the place. The book bashes the government a lot so yeah that's sweet.
• 
  Unsavvyscott

  Howard Zinn challenges misconceptions of Americas independence as well as mystification and glamorization of Americas founding fathers. Zinn mixes History with Philosophy and then sprinkles some critical thinking on the top.
• 
  James

  My favorite Zinn. I taught from this book for 3 years and my students really responded to it.
• 
  Iver

  One of his greatest books by far.
• 
  James Chin

  cool dude
• 
  Karen

  This book was banned in Arizona.
• 
  Thomas Simard

  Zinn asks questions that need to be asked and provides history that needs to be considered.
  
• 
  Ron Janssen

  This is one of the most important books I have ever read
• 
  sologdin

  fairly standard lefty critique of US ideological apparati. committed, reasoned, &c.
• 
  Donald Romaniello

  I liked this work much better than his more famous, A People's History of the U.S.
• 
  Alice Mott

  Necessary for an understanding of United States history; a fresh/different point of view.