Originally posted by adam warlock
I'll bite: The Sandinistas right after the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. Taking into account a lot of other revolutions all over the world and time these guys and girls were practically saints.
But I have to say that you used the right word to describe what I feel: "Belief". Because really that's all I got. A belief that is based on some histor d take over their own lives.
I'm extremely curious to know what's your example.
Howard Zinn concludes by making this statement - which seems to sum up his general view:
Such fundamental changes would require a radical change in priorities, from spending $300 to $400 billion a year for the military, to using this wealth to improve the living conditions of Americans and people in other parts of the world. For instance, it was estimated by the World Health Organization that a small portion of the American military budget, if given to the treatment of tuberculosis in the world, could save millions of lives.
The Unites States, by such a drastic change in its policies, would no longer be a military superpower, but it could be a humanitarian superpower, using its wealth to help people in need.
in so many words -- he is arguing that if the US (and other powerful nations) stopped being oppressive - if the US was to start treating everyone with absolute (or at least radically increased levels of) fairness, justice, and compassion -- if the US was to become a humanitarian SUPERPOWER (Zinn's own words) -- we could indeed usher in New Age in which swords were beaten into plowshares. But how does Zinn propose to do this? Does he think his history book will do the job?
The big fly in the ointment is that it never seems to be politically possible to carry out such a vision - at least not beyond a certain point. There seems to be a severe limit to how many tax dollars the American people are willing to spend on feeding the poor or building infrastructure in the developing world (for that matter, there's a severe limit on the tax dollars we're willing to spend on building our OWN infrastructure or feeding our OWN poor).
And if a nation as "civilized" as the US is so unable to change its views and become a model of humanitarianism, is there any hope that any other oppressive agent around the world will spontaneously do so either?
I actually do have an optimistic view regarding what human beings are capable of - it's just that I do not have an absolute optimism.