Howard Zinn Quotes
Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.
Zinn, Howard. Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian. Common Courage Press, 1993, p. 45.
This quotation distressed many ultra rightists who otherwise were avid followers of Mises. See {632407} for another quotation that distressed many European conservative devotees of Mises.
This is the origin of the term “democide” which while not yet in common use has an importantly different meaning from genocide. The former Soviet Union killed millions for the purpose of gaining and maintaining power although they were not intending to wipe our a people or a culture—just opponents. Nazi Germany was guilty of both genocide and democide.
The Tanguts were a major Chinese Buddhist culture and people with generations of history, emperors, books and religion. The Mongols had been fighting them for over 20 years. After his death, his army obeyed the order and not only murdered every Tangit they could in the capital city in Western Xia, but razed their buildings, burned their books, destroyed their tombs and artifacts. Tanguts who were in other parts of Western Xia were absorbed and assimilated into the Mongol culture. Even the Tangut language died out in a few generations. The Tanguts had been made to “vanish”.
This was part of the continual conflict between the Muslims and the Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Greeks ended up doubling their territory.
Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, philosopher, socialist thinker and World War II veteran. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a political science professor at Boston University. Zinn wrote over 20 books, including his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United States in 1980. In 2007, he published a version of it for younger readers, A Young People's History of the United States.
