I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.
Howard ZinnRead
Crosses and gallows - that deadly historic juxtaposition.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the stark contrast between oppression and freedom throughout history.
Howard Zinn's quote on 'crosses and gallows' symbolizes the enduring struggle between the forces of oppression and the quest for liberation. It draws attention to historical injustices where the gallows represent execution and tyranny, while crosses can imply hope, sacrifice, or the fight for freedom. This juxtaposition serves to remind us of the constant battle between these opposing forces in the narrative of human history.
In practice
During a lecture on social justice, one might use this quote to discuss the historical context of oppression.
I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.
History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.
Objectivity is impossible and it is also undesirable. That is, if it were possible it would be undesirable, because if you have any kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way; should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way, then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity.
The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interest, where any chosen emphasis supports some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial, or national or sexual.
Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.
The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth.
Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. ... We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode.
One thing 'not right' on the 50th anniversary of the Selma marches is the sad fact that the Edmund Pettus Bridge hasn't been renamed the John Lewis Bridge.
For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future.
David Ben-Gurion was a mythic figure, the founding father of Israel and a modern-day prophet, but he was also a real man who stormed through history on human legs. It was my great privilege to know him and work with him for many years.
I grew up in the shadow of the Trujillato, saw how the regime had ravaged so many families.
It is one of the ironies of this strange century that the most lasting results of the October revolution, whose object was the global overthrow of capitalism, was to save its antagonist, both in war and in peace - that is to say, by providing it with the incentive, fear, to reform itself after the Second World War, and, by establishing the popularity of economic planning, furnishing it with some of the procedures for its reform
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