This may sound repetitive to some, but it’s currently one of the hottest stories in the news. You can probably guess what news story I chose "Libya" again. No, I am not from Libya, but I really do care about it. In his book "Lies my teacher told me," Loewen argues that American textbooks are being altered to give a pleasant view of the American government; especially the executive branch (President). Whenever you open up an American History textbook, the first thing you see is probably something about the US and some other country. What the text books however fail to do is bring out the voices of the people. For example, when a text books says something like "US and Britain intervened in Libya to protect its civilians, they really are just talking about their governments, not their people. The textbooks tell history from governmental point of view. "Textbook authors overlook the possibility that the balance of powers set forth in the constitution, states, and reserving some for individuals, has been decisively altered" says Loewen in the first page of ch. 8 of his book. Loewen argues that textbooks alter the fact that the government does not hold sovereign power. This I find to be totally true because the US offers so much freedom compared to other countries. For example, a president can be impeached according to the law. In other countries (the Middle East for example) impeachment can evidently only come from a revolution or overthrowing of the president. The text books (from an esocentic) point of view raise a generation thinking that the civilians have no say in the government and that only officials have the power. The story I got from the news (http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/04/02/libya.rape.case/index.html?npt=NP1) is about the "allegedly" raped Eman al-Obeidy. For those of you who do not know who she is or what the story is, Eman, came out to the public a couple of weeks ago and spoke out against the Libyan government claiming that Ghadafi's forces raped her. Some are sympathetic towards her and some call her a traitor. The people that call her a traitor do so because they think that this is a game from the US government to gain sympathy around the world so sending ground forces won't be a "frowned upon" idea. This is exactly one of the points Loewen is trying to make in his text. "They see our policies as part of a morality play in which the United States typically acts on behalf of human rights, democracy, and "the American Way." This is a quote from Loewen's text showing that the above story falls right into one of Loewen's arguments. We evidently saw this from the text book example, "The American Pageant." Stalin’s emphasis on “spheres” also clashed with Roosevelt’s Wilsonian dream of an “open world,” decolonized, demilitarized, and democratized, with a strong international organization to maintain global peace.” The following passage supports Loewen’s argument because once again, the text book is implying that human rights can best be protected by US intervention to achieve global peace. “US intervention” was not mentioned explicitly in the text, but this is one of the circumstances where you’d have to read in between the lines to comprehend.
Primary Source: Watching Big Brother chapter
Secondary: The American Pageant
Secondary: CNN
I think you picked a really interesting story! The power of propaganda is pretty amazing, especially in this day in age, but its so effective! This story might be the only one many people see and of course, the first reaction of most would be, well of course we should intervene and help people like this woman. But if you only see one small piece of a larger puzzle, its easy to make a very uneducated decision/viewpoint.
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