The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

File No. 100-360217

Posted on | August 2, 2010 | 12 Comments

For those who missed the weekend’s Howard Zinn FBI files story — or who prefer a straight narrative account — my latest column at The American Spectator is “The Case Against Howard Zinn”:

Howard Zinn was teaching a class, but he wasn’t yet a professor and his classroom wasn’t at a university. It was late 1951, and the students who gathered for Zinn’s lessons in Brooklyn were his fellow members of the Communist Party USA.
One of Zinn’s comrades described him as “a person with some authority” within the local CPUSA section and said that Zinn’s class was on “basic Marxism,” the theme being “that the basic teachings of Marx and Lenin were sound and should be adhered to by those present.”
That description, furnished to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by a former Communist in 1957, is included in more than 400 pages of Zinn’s FBI file made public last week.
The FBI files demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that Zinn — author of A People’s History of the United States, widely used as a textbook or supplement in many of our nation’s high schools and universities — was a card-carrying Communist at a time when the Soviet Union was America’s most dreaded enemy. . . .

Read the whole thing. It’s two pages, so it might help to click the print-friendly version — which is also convenient for sharing with your local board of education, high-school principals, college professors, etc.

Category: Education, History

Comments

12 Responses to “File No. 100-360217”

  1. Virginia Right! News Hound for 8/2/2010 | Virginia Right!
    August 2nd, 2010 @ 8:00 am

    […] File No. 100-360217 […]

  2. Joe
    August 2nd, 2010 @ 1:08 pm

    If you read Zinn’s book, all doubt of his sympathies would be removed. Yeah, he was an enemy of the United States and thought the Soviet Union was the proper model to follow.

  3. Joe
    August 2nd, 2010 @ 9:08 am

    If you read Zinn’s book, all doubt of his sympathies would be removed. Yeah, he was an enemy of the United States and thought the Soviet Union was the proper model to follow.

  4. Ran / Si Vis Pacem
    August 2nd, 2010 @ 1:45 pm

    Um… Never been a fan of Zin, myself. Heh.

  5. Ran / Si Vis Pacem
    August 2nd, 2010 @ 9:45 am

    Um… Never been a fan of Zin, myself. Heh.

  6. Red
    August 2nd, 2010 @ 3:06 pm

    Totally linked” Yesterday’s Zinn post as well as this one

  7. Red
    August 2nd, 2010 @ 11:06 am

    Totally linked” Yesterday’s Zinn post as well as this one

  8. Red Pawn « The Camp Of The Saints
    August 2nd, 2010 @ 11:17 am

    […] society.  While there is no evidence as yet that he was a spy for the Soviets, it is clear that he committed Treason against The United States Of America.  Now we have enough proof of this to see that his writings […]

  9. Monday Rule 2? Why the Hell not? | The Daley Gator
    August 2nd, 2010 @ 4:23 pm

    […] I was conflicted on which post to link. Should I go for the Bimbo gets out of jail?  Maybe the, yes, the old bastard IS a dirty Communist! Perhaps the, You might be a RAAAAACIST if…., but instead, I opted for the obligatory Stupid […]

  10. Live Free Or Die
    August 2nd, 2010 @ 9:37 pm

    Cleon Skousen could of told you that Howard Zinn was a Naked Communist.

  11. Live Free Or Die
    August 2nd, 2010 @ 5:37 pm

    Cleon Skousen could of told you that Howard Zinn was a Naked Communist.

  12. Intellectual history « The Tiger on Politics
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 3:24 pm

    […] turns out that the man was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of the United States — one so dedicated that he attended Party meeting five times a week and taught their […]