Reading notes

Howard Zinn is an amazing writer who zeroes in on the heart of the matter:

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. …

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on September 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

What makes our nation immune from the normal standards of human decency? …

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation. We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

Yes — hence my long-time bumper sticker, “God bless the whole world — no exceptions.”

I’m convinced that nationalism as now practiced is a scourge, a disease afflicting the inner- and outer Kingdom of God envisioned in scripture, a Sin with a capital S. I wrote a short entry about nationalism’s bullying symptoms back on May 23, 2003.

[via Dale]