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2904f3c
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Since the Indians were better woodsmen than the English and virtually impossible to track down, the method was to feign peaceful intentions, let them settle down and plant their corn wherever they chose, and then, just before harvest, fall upon them, killing as many as possible and burning the corn. . . . Within two or three years of the massacre the English had avenged the deaths of that day many times over.
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Howard Zinn |
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78be790
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Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, ..
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Howard Zinn |
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f559615
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Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott's army, of the rise of industrialism as seen ..
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Howard Zinn |
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a91e5ad
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Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war?
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Howard Zinn |
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110a296
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The true task of education, Alfred North Whitehead cautioned, is to abjure stale knowledge. "Knowledge does not keep any better than fish," he said. We need to keep it alive, vital, potent."
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Howard Zinn |
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591eb3d
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IWW organizer Joseph Ettor said: If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists. . . .
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Howard Zinn |
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b81909b
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In 1992, teachers all over the country, by the thousands, were beginning to teach the Columbus story in new ways, to recognize that to Native Americans, Columbus and his men were not heroes, but marauders. The point being not just to revise our view of past events, but to be provoked to think about today.
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Howard Zinn |
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102b143
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Aucun representant ne peut exactement representer les besoins d'autrui ; un representant tend a devenir membre d'une certaine elite et jouit souvent de privileges qui erodent l'interet qu'il doit porter aux revendications de ses mandants. Relayee par les elus du systeme representatif, la colere des protestataires perd de sa force ; [...]. Les elus developpent une certaine expertise qui tend a sa propre perpetuation. Les representants passen..
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Howard Zinn |
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16696e6
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Aucun changement fonctionnel ou structurel ne peut garantir une societe parfaitement democratique. Nous acceptons mal ce fait parce que nous avons ete eleves dans une culture technologique ou l'on pense generalement que, si on pouvait seulement trouver le bon instrument, tou irait enfin pour le mieux et qu'il serait alors possible de se relacher un peu. Mais on ne peut jamais se relacher. L'experience des Noirs americains, comme celle des I..
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Howard Zinn |
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809705c
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There was an idea in the air, becoming clearer and stronger, an idea not just in the theories of Karl Marx but in the dreams of writers and artists through the ages: that people might cooperatively use the treasures of the earth to make life better for everyone, not just a few.
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Howard Zinn |
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493d1e5
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Jackson began raids into Florida, arguing it was a sanctuary for escaped slaves and for marauding Indians. Florida, he said, was essential to the defense of the United States. It was that classic modern preface to a war of conquest. Thus began the Seminole War of 1818, leading to the American acquisition of Florida. It appears on classroom maps politely as "Florida Purchase, 1819"--but it came from Andrew Jackson's military campaign across ..
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Howard Zinn |
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f158325
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WITCH lives and laughs in every woman. She is the free part of each of us, beneath the shy smiles, the acquiescence to absurd male domination, the make-up or flesh-suffocating clothes our sick society demands. There is no "joining" WITCH. If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a WITCH. You make your own rules."
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Howard Zinn |
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54e074f
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You can't be neutral on a moving train,
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Howard Zinn |
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2851ca7
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The colonies, it seems, were societies of contending classes--a fact obscured by the emphasis, in traditional histories, on the external struggle against England, the unity of colonists in the Revolution. The country therefore was not "born free" but born slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord, poor and rich." --
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Howard Zinn |
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55acef6
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The inferior position of blacks, the exclusion of Indians from the new society, the establishment of supremacy for the rich and powerful in the new nation--all this was already settled in the colonies by the time of the Revolution. With the English out of the way, it could now be put on paper, solidified, regularized, made legitimate, by the Constitution of the United States, drafted at a convention of Revolutionary leaders in Philadelphia.
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Howard Zinn |
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9e4a5ea
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In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.
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Howard Zinn |
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dd19476
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If racism can't be shown to be natural, then it is the result of certain conditions, and we are impelled to eliminate those conditions.
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Howard Zinn |
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cc50b6e
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Une population parfaitement determinee est en mesure non seulement de contraindre un dirigeant a fuir son pays, mais egalement de faire reculer un candidat a l'occupation de son territoire par la mise en oeuvre d'un formidable ensemble de strategies disponible : boycotts et manifestations, occupations de locaux et sit-in, arrets de travail et greves generales, obstructions et sabotages, greve des loyers et des impots, refus de cooperer, ref..
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Howard Zinn |
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6b35cc5
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The owners of factories are more concerned than other classes and interests in the intelligence of their laborers. When the latter are well-educated and the former are disposed to deal justly, controversies and strikes can never occur, nor can the minds of the masses be prejudiced by demagogues and controlled by temporary and factious considerations.
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Howard Zinn |
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0dd5798
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Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mask of Anarchy." . . . "Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number! Shake your chains to earth, like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you-- Ye are many, they are few!"
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Howard Zinn |
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d0298b7
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I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.
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Howard Zinn |
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accf315
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The ecological crisis in the world had become so obviously serious that Pope John Paul II felt the need to rebuke the wealthy classes of the industrialized nations for creating that crisis: "Today, the dramatic threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to which greed and selfishness, both individual and collective, are contrary to the order of creation."
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Howard Zinn |
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0eeb8d9
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There is not a country in world history in which racism has been more important, for so long a time, as the United States.
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Howard Zinn |
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70379b7
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Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is. And so, the schools, the churches, the popular literature taught that to be rich was a sign of superiority, to be poor a sign of personal failure, and that the only way upward for a poor person was to climb into ..
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Howard Zinn |
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5a69737
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Morgan then formed the U.S. Steel Corporation, combining Carnegie's corporation with others. He sold stocks and bonds for $1,300,000,000 (about 400 million more than the combined worth of the companies) and took a fee of 150 million for arranging the consolidation. How could dividends be paid to all those stockholders and bondholders? By making sure Congress passed tariffs keeping out foreign steel; by closing off competition and maintainin..
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Howard Zinn |
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918d51f
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So, Son, instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort your mother . . . take her for a long walk in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers here and there. . . . But remember always, Dante, in the play of happiness, don't you use all for yourself only. . . . help the persecuted and the victim because they are your better friends. . . . In this struggle of life you will find more and love and you will be loved.
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happiness
son
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Howard Zinn |
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749504d
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Capital punishment could not be justified in any society calling itself civilized.
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zinn
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Howard Zinn |
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5297bf0
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There is an underside to every age about which history does not often speak, because history is written from records left by the privileged"."
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Howard Zinn |
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9274596
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party politics and religion now substituting for class conflict.
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Howard Zinn |
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53ebd3e
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When Chief Black Hawk was defeated and captured in 1832, he made a surrender speech: I fought hard. But your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like birds in the air, and whizzed by our ears like the wind through the trees in the winter. My warriors fell around me. . . The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sunk in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. . . He is now..
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war
indians
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Howard Zinn |
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38c2643
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True, fascism was not to be tolerated by decent people. But neither was racism or colonialism or slave labor camps--one or another of which was a characteristic of all of the Allied powers.
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Howard Zinn |
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4b8ef04
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Carl Degler says (Out of Our Past): "No new social class came to power through the door of the American revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class." George Washington was the richest man in America. John Hancock was a prosperous Boston merchant. Benjamin Franklin was a wealthy printer. And so on. On the other hand, town mechanics, laborers, and seamen, as well as small farmers, were swept..
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Howard Zinn |
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051cdfe
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From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introducti..
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Howard Zinn |
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29c8367
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Another view of the Constitution was put forward early in the twentieth century by the historian Charles Beard (arousing anger and indignation, including a denunciatory editorial in the New York Times). He wrote in his book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution: Inasmuch as the primary object of a government, beyond the mere repression of physical violence, is the making of the rules which determine the property relations of member..
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Howard Zinn |
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682fb6d
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Roosevelt was as much concerned to end the oppression of Jews as Lincoln was to end slavery during the Civil War; their priority in policy (whatever their personal compassion for victims of persecution) was not minority rights, but national power.
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Howard Zinn |
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75bf573
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I lay back on my bunk and thought about people I love, and how lucky I was to be white and not poor and just passing briefly through a system which is a permanent hell for so many.
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Howard Zinn |
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2935c72
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All those histories of this country centered on the Founding Fathers and the Presidents weigh oppressively on the capacity of the ordinary citizen to act. They suggest that in times of crisis we must look to someone to save us: in the Revolutionary crisis, the Founding Fathers; in the slavery crisis, Lincoln; in the Depression, Roosevelt; in the Vietnam-Watergate crisis, Carter. And that between occasional crises everything is all right, an..
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Howard Zinn |
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7d3d311
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The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.
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Howard Zinn |
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062224b
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the farmer is the man The Farmer is the man Lives on credit till the fall With the interest rates so high It's a wonder he don't die And the mortgage man's the one that gets it all. The farmer is the man The farmer is the man Lives on credit till the fall And his pants are wearing thin His condition it's a sin He's forgot that he's the man that feeds them all.
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man
feed
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Howard Zinn |
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2b6f926
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Only one fear was greater than the fear of black rebellion in the new American colonies.
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Howard Zinn |
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01afd7e
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The president, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defense were lying to the American public--there was no evidence of any attack, and the American destroyers were not on "routine patrol" but on spying missions."
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Howard Zinn |
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ab4ab92
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It was the new politics of ambiguity--speaking for the lower and middle classes to get their support in times of rapid growth and potential turmoil. The two-party system came into its own in this time. To give people a choice between two different parties and allow them, in a period of rebellion, to choose the slightly more democratic one was an ingenious mode of control.
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Howard Zinn |
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e2d3c2b
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T]hat combination of inferior status and derogatory thought [is what] we call racism.
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Howard Zinn |
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7f20e1f
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Would the behavior of the United States during the war--in military action abroad, in treatment of minorities at home--be in keeping with a "people's war"? Would the country's wartime policies respect the rights of ordinary people everywhere to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? And would postwar America, in its policies at home and overseas, exemplify the values for which the war was supposed to have been fought? These questions ..
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Howard Zinn |