The ‘left wing’ liberal Howard Zinn died recently. He was a very strong voice who led questioning of the US government actions with its military investments and supporting the recent bank bailouts. From Howard Zinn’s transcript on “War and Social Justice”
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/2/placeholder_howard_zinn
But when you start criticizing, when you start making an honest assessment of what we have done in the world, they say you’re being unpatriotic. Well, you have to—that’s another part of the mindset you have to get rid of, because if you don’t, then you think you have to wear a flag in your lapel or you think you have to always have American flags around you, and you have to show, by your love for all this meaningless paraphernalia, that you are patriotic. Well, that’s, you know—oh, there, too, an honest presidential candidate would not be afraid to say, “You know, patriotism is not a matter of wearing a flag in your lapel, not a matter of this or not—patriotism is not supporting the government. Patriotism is supporting the principles that the government is supposed to stand for.” You know, so we need to redefine these things which we have come—which have been thrown at us and which we’ve imbibed without thinking, not thinking, “Oh, what really is patriotism?” If we start really thinking about what it is, then we will reject these cries that you’re not patriotic, and we’ll say, “Patriotism is not supporting the government.” When the government does bad things, the most patriotic thing you can do is to criticize the government, because that’s the Declaration of Independence. That’s our basic democratic charter. The Declaration of Independence says governments are set up by the people to—they’re artificial creations. They’re set up to ensure certain rights, the equal right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. So when governments become destructive of those ends, the Declaration said, “it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish” the government. That’s our basic democratic charter. People have forgotten what it is. It’s OK to alter or abolish the government when the government violates its trust. And then you are being patriotic. I mean, the government violates its trust, the government is being unpatriotic.
I think this is something that applies to companies too, where companies start doing things that don’t really support the customers, and may even undermine what the customers are paying for when they buy your products and services. Yet companies often take the same line as governments, where if you complain, they don’t want to hear it. Sometimes I’m not sure why companies have this tiers of employees except that some of the employees ‘buy more into’ the idea that what their company does cannot be publically criticized as this would give our customers a wrong image. Instead, a lie is supposed to be better and a more correct image. So often it seems to be ‘better’ to be quiet and express your opinions softly so that things don’t improve.
So called liberals sometimes bring out things we don’t want to hear because those thoughts are true and erode our image of what we want something to be. But when we buy into things, we have to accept it warts and all.
Feeling patriotic?
Anyone who says that blind loyalty is what defines you as a good company employee is forgetting that blind loyalty just gives you an additional handicap. And especially for educational institutions, this is a very sad comment on the state of affairs when educators are part of the problem within those places rather than working to fix the problems that they have. Instead of pushing agendas that are divorced from whether students are learning useful aspects to help them get jobs and/or start companies, places are simply budgeting and telling part-timers what they are qualified to teach. Yes, we can’t teach about things because we’re not experts with a degree showing that we studied that. And we can’t come out for a strike where students are asking for some things that might help our university because it may be seen as being disruptive. No, we must all be model employees or should I say robots.
Born to teach 