Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." Confucius

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know." Donald Rumsfeld, U. S. Secretary of Defense, Bush Administration, in press conference about war in Iraq.

The application of Confucius' statement would ordinarily caution against a precipitous entry into war and would have argued in favor of an objective analysis of intelligence and against proceeding into the 2003 war in Iraq. Instead, Rumsfeld's bastardization of that ancient wisdom added the idiocy of "unknown unknowns" and used them, as well as what he claimed were the "known knowns" (as if there were some) and the "known unknowns", as a justification for the United States' entry into that war.

Howard Zinn understood the difference between the wisdom of Confucius and the lack of wisdom of Rumsfeld. A review of his life on the occasion of his death is a forceful reminder that we should all also know the difference and insist that others do too. May Professor Zinn rest in peace.