Howard Zinn's passing this week gave me pause.  As a history student at Indiana University in the late '80s, reading Zinn's A People's History was de rigueur.  I was ultimately more drawn to the oral histories of Studs Terkel, another great who died two years ago at 98, but both men's plain-spoken humanism in the earnest search for Truth touched me deeply.



It's Tempting to say that we are getting on to the last of a dying breed here, and there's definitely some truth in it.  In all of the well-deserved accolades for Zinn, we should not forget that his achievement as a scholar was our achievement as a society.  Zinn, who was a bombardier in WWII, was also a beneficiary of the GI Bill, which produced a civic "golden age" in postwar America.  Terkel had likewise benefited from the WPA's Federal Writers' Project.

The deep humanism of both men (and countless other public intellectuals who benefited from such social programs) stemmed at least in part from the opportunities society afforded them, which they repaid, and then some, through their enduring commitment to its highest principles. 

Some see an irony in the fact that these democratizing social programs produced radicals like Zinn, that the generosity of the post-war era was repaid with social revolution.  But they've taken the wrong lesson from history.  As Zinn put it:

Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson – that everything we do matters – is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress.We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.

Good government can mitigate injustice — it can promote opportunity, not least through education which imparts meaningful skills, and ambitious social programs that empower those without means to become stakeholders in society. 

Unfortunately — or so it seems — having seen the risk in the likes of Howard Zinn, we've recoiled from our radical potential for excellence.