[driftless2]

I never read Zinn's book, but I guess I've read plenty of the same sentiments through the literature I read in college, statements I've heard from leftist profs, and on my own. The "history" is basically the history a person would expect from someone on the far left like Zinn. Their hatred of capitalism squashes every logical thought. If the so-called elites were so powerful, then why do we have so many Americans today who live so well? (Obama might make up for that though.) My family was lower middle class. We were poor. Today I have two sisters who have accumulated wealth of a million or more, and me and my other siblings are doing pretty good. That's what you can do in America.

But since the wealth was based on working in a capitalist system, it's fraudulent according to Zinn and his acolytes. Of course Matt Damon and the rest of the Zinn-loving Wholelyweird celebs are going to distribute all their wealth to the unfortunates, right? What a joke.

[Stoat]

Agreed...I haven't read his book either but I've been forced to read numerous screeds of a similarly damaged perspective in college, and they all tend to extol the supposed and oftentimes quite tenuous virtues of any non-white, non-Western and non-Capitalist person, culture or nation regardless of the levels of  ignorance, corruption and murderous depravity they have enthusiastically engaged in or embraced. A visceral, seething hatred of America, entirely due to her successes, is part of the Religion of the Left...it's burned into their DNA.

Sometimes, however, Capitalist successes are so monumental that even the unabashedly Left BBC takes notice, such as in the recent gift from the Gates Foundation

BBC News - Bill and Melinda Gates make $10bn vaccine pledge

Mr Gates said that by increasing immunisation coverage in poorer countries to 90% it should be possible to save the lives of 7.6 million children under five between 2010 and 2019.

I would suggest that if even double the projected 7.6 million lives saved comes to be true, it would unfortunately not bring back the hundreds of millions that have been tortured, slaughtered and 'cleansed' by the Left, whose innumerable horrors the oh-so-smug BBC doesn't like to speak of so much as they and their Leftist acolytes happily continue in their quest of endlessly bashing Capitalism, and particularly American Capitalism.

An essential movie that I would heartily recommend to anyone (although not children, as it includes quite a few shocking scenes) is The Soviet Story

The Soviet Story (2008)

It provides a lot of information that has only been recently uncovered after the fall of the Soviet Union, as well as providing insights into the links between Communism and Naziism....fascinating but excruciatingly painful to view as well....as it needs to be in order to portray the Left accurately.

Congratulations to you and your family's successes....people like you and myself are instinctively hated by the Left because our lives disprove the entire foundation of their existence and focus in life....and that's just the way I like it ;-)