Howard Zinn Quotes
Majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things - proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. Majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. People have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote.
Zinn, Howard. Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology. HarperCollins, 1990.
The English colonial administrators in South Africa and London were appalled at the discrimination against the Black majority practiced by the whites. The white Boers in particular saw them as little more than slaves.
Faction was the word Madison used for Political Party.
Statement regarding the situation the Mormons encountered where the majority of the citizens in the areas that they inhabited were not only opposed to Mormonism but felt it moral to attack, harass and even murder Mormons. Because the bigots were in the majority, the politicians and officials were loath to protect the Mormons. In Mormon religious prophesy, before the Second Coming of Christ the Mormons must settle in Zion and the Jews in Israel. So the persecution preventing them from settling in Zion was the work of Satan to prevent Christ’s coming.
This is a particularly memorable quotation for several reasons. First the address was given by a young senior student who would later be a member of Congress, a effective abolitionist, and the author of various pieces of legislation that vexed the South. What is even more memorable is that the oration was given at an Ivy League College Official Graduation. The Ivy league schools, despite their reputation for intellectual freedom, generally were very adverse to any discussion about the slavery issue as it would cause too much passionate contention. See {621346} for an example at Harvard. In addition, Brown University was in Providence RI, where the economy depended in substantial part on slavery. The Co-Founder of Brown was himself a slave trader {622028}. This was one of the early American anti-slavery orations.
He was concerned about the possible “tyranny of the majority.”
This quotation is historically important because Davis clearly states the reason for the rebellion of the South. The anti-slave states were growing at a greater rate than the slave states and despite the greater voting power that a southerner had (a result of the 3/5 count of slaves for census purposes, and the Senate), the handwriting was on the wall and the majority of the United States was against the vicious institution of slavery and would make it unprofitable, impossible and/or illegal in the coming years. Southern slavery advocates saw this as a “tyranny of the majority” and therefore took up arms. In the early 20th century, apologists for the Southern rebellion tried to promote the idea that there were reasons other than slavery, but this quotation and the resolutions of the states who withdrew from the Union make it clear that the right to maintain slavery was the only significant issue. In that sense it was a States’ Rights issue, but the South was opposed to States’ Rights when it came to States refusing to return fugitive slaves when Federal Law required such under the Dred Scott Supreme Court Decision.
Madison wrote this essay for publication in New York. That state, one of the largest and most important of the 13 colonies, was polarized about the proposed Constitution and Madison, Hamilton and John Jay produced this great set of essays to convince Americans to vote for ratification. Madison acknowledged that many people had complained about various aspects of the proposed constitution and in this essay he deals with the complaints about political parties—“factions”.
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.
