Howard Zinn lecture

I went to a wonderful talk by Howard Zinn this evening. He's a wonderfully gifted speaker. He made a very clear case for exiting Iraq as soon as possible. The U.S. occupation is causing more violence to occur. It is an irritant, and even though we can't predict what will happen when we leave, our absence means the removal of one more obstacle on their journey toward a more normal and safer society. He pointed out that we, in this country, have a very limited sort of freedom of speech, where people are indeed allowed to say what they want. I can get up on a soapbox and talk to 50 people, but Procter and Gamble, who made the soap box, can talk to millions of people. Freedom of speech is also about quantity, and it is the large corporations that have the voice. One other thing from his lecture that really hit home for me was his blanket statement that war is never justified. I wholeheartedly agree. War, at least in his definition, always involves the indiscriminate killing of thousands of innocent people. During WWII, the good war, 50 million people were killed. Was this justifiable? The holocaust may never have happened, if there were no war, because the war generated widespread madness on both sides. On the German side, there was the madness of the holocaust. On our side there was the madness of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By engaging in war, the cycle perpetuates. If we can refrain from war, and get at the root of the problem, the cycle can end. Although it seems unlikely, fantastic, and utopian, it is possible if we try. If we don't try, it is clearly impossible. Anyway, he said it much more eloquently and thoroughly than I can.

Side note: I got him to sign a copy of my book "The Southern Mystique." :)