https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/07/04/howard-zinns-july-4-wisdom-stands-test-time
If we wish to get down to what is really real, shouldn’t we try to rethink our way to a viable truth that can help us understand who we are as a nation, how we got to be where we are, and then figure out how to make things better? I am posting this Fourth of July message from the late Howard Zinn because it encourages me to appreciate what this county should be about and what it is not, in part because too many allow the myths to blind them to what is true and what is really happening in our world. This country has never treated all as equal and nor has there ever been justice for all. And now, on this Forth of July, we should keep before us the image of the many who represents so much of what is wrong, so much of what we should always be working hard to prevent against. To all, a somber Fourth of July. On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Howard Zinn:
“Is not nationalism—that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder—one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
These ways of thinking—cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on— have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.”