More Zinn

More pearls of wisdom from an interview with Howard Zinn in Identity Theory.

Zinn: I think there is a very large number of people in this country — this even borne out by public opinion polls which over the last ten or fifteen years have shown that on issues — the public is ahead of both major parties. That the public has been consistently willing to take more money out of the military budget and spend it for education and housing and human needs. I believe there are huge numbers of people in this country who would be willing to have radical changes in our economic and social system in order to make it a more egalitarian society and do away with homelessness and hunger and clean up the environment. But these people have no voice. They have no way of expressing themselves. Elections give them no way of expressing themselves. I go around the country and I speak and not to audiences of radicals.

Identity Theory: Given your busy schedule, one can assume that your audience is much larger than the core progressive community...there aren't that many radicals.

Zinn: [laughs] No, there aren't. I go to speak to California Polytechnic Institute in San Luis Obispo. How many radicals can there be there? How many liberals can there be there? Fifteen hundred students show up. And they listen to me and I'm talking about the economic system and the profit system as being wrong and inhuman and I talk about the necessity to abolish war as a means of solving problems and to not have any more military interventions and to seriously cut down the military budget. I talk about these things and they...agree. I found this, I talk to audiences in Oklahoma and Texas and here and there and mostly to audiences of people who don't really know my work. I certainly don't expect them to be sympathetic to my ideas. When I express my ideas — and they are radical ideas — except that I don't start off by saying, "I'm now going to tell you radical ideas." Or, "I'm now going to expound ideas of socialism or attack capitalism." Or, "This is going to be a hate imperialism talk." None of that. People respond to commonsense ideas about foreign policy and domestic policy. It encourages me about the potential in this country, despite who is running it.