Asymmetrical Bias

Patriots and Peoples appears to be a neglected blog. Posts have been rare the past two years. Nonetheless, this blog continues to attract readers on a daily basis. I am pleased with the quality of many of the posts here. While I realize that a few are empty filler, and a few others offer wrong-headed analysis or compound errors with error. When I find the errors in my own work, I correct them.

Patriots and Peoples is a work in progress that primarily documents my reading and rereading of two biased history texts. The authors of these texts do not pretend that their work is objective. Both books are explicitly partisan.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) became explicitly anti-war following his experiences as a bombardier during the Second Wold War. Zinn described his own political orientation as "something of an anarchist, something of a socialist, Maybe a Democratic Socialist" (Glavin and Morse). A People's History of the United States is the work that made Zinn famous. He revised it principally through expansion, not through correction. The work begins with an explanation and defense of the author's biases.

Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen explicitly side with the Right-wing of today's Republican Party.


References

Paul Glavin and Chuck Morse, "War is the Health of the State: An Interview with Howard Zinn," Perspectives on Anarchist Theory 7 (Spring 2003).