love is a place
Zinn:
It seems to me there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture, and which help explain the vulnerability of the press and of the citizenry to outrageous lies whose consequences bring death to tens of thousands of people. If we can understand those reasons, we can guard ourselves better against being deceived.
One is in the dimension of time, that is, an absence of historical perspective. The other is in the dimension of space, that is, an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.
If we don’t know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. I am not speaking of the history we learned in school, a history subservient to our political leaders, from the much-admired Founding Fathers to the Presidents of recent years. I mean a history which is honest about the past. If we don’t know that history, then any President can stand up to the battery of microphones, declare that we must go to war, and we will have no basis for challenging him. He will say that the nation is in danger, that democracy and liberty are at stake, and that we must therefore send ships and planes to destroy our new enemy, and we will have no reason to disbelieve him.
The Prof makes an important point, and not just for matters of war and peace, but those ecotoned and environmental too.
Many European nations, for instance, who've made great strides towards reducing their carbon emissions, oftentimes have a more profound sense of their ties to the land, and their land's history - take Jose Bove, a farm populist right out of America's turn-of-the-century past, but who would be lucky to get his fifteen minutes here today.
All too often, land is a matter of mere sentimentality in America, and even preservation or conservation - the most politically conservative strains of environmentalism - which call for saving and cultivating land for its own sake just doesn't speak to the values of a nation which has no sense of its history, or sees itself so blessed as to be above it.
<< Home