The Great Connections Seminar

The Great Connections Seminar
Discussing ethics

Sunday, November 27, 2011

More on the "99%"

Following up on my last post, I found a website, History is a Weapon, with the entire text of Zinn's People's History of the U.S.  Here's a quote from Chapter 24 on this webpage:


"One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another...Against the reality of that desperate, bitter battle for resources made scarce by elite control, I am taking the liberty of uniting those 99 percent as 'the people.'"

Not only is it clear from the text that this is the origin of the Occupy movement's "99%" mantra, but the Occupy movement is advertising on the very webpage of the book which discusses this issue. No wonder: over 1 million copies of this textbook have been sold and used at high schools and universities across the country in the past 20 years.

2 comments:

cellurl said...

Not sure I understand your view. Usually I agree with you, but not sure if this is where we diverge.

The class warfare is being manufactured for re-election purposes. See here:

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/2011/11/23/bill-oreilly-president-obamas-big-gamble

Unknown said...

You may be right as to why the class warfare is being encouraged. My point was that the issue of the "99%" and the particular way it is framed is specifically from Howard Zinn.

Zinn's book has been used to educated thousands of high school and college students for the past 20 years.