Saturday, August 6, 2011

The 111th Congress and the Lobby

How many Members of Congress who left Congress last year became lobbyists? Read the article here. Link to the graphic here.


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Jon said...

I am not a history teacher, but I teach psychology/neuroscience at city college of new york. I'm interested in history and politics, and like this blog very much.

In retrospect, I did not get as much out of my high school history courses as I think I might I have. I have a question about the teaching of US history in our high schools. I've read some of Chomsky, and I'm not a huge fan of his. But it does seem to me almost certainly true that a guiding principle of US foreign policy seems always (or nearly always) to be: we support foreign governments that open markets to U.S. companies; and we oppose those that don't (e.g., the coup in Guatamela to out Guzman).
In high school, I learned that the U.S. is always on the side of freedom. It wasn't obvious to me that I was missing a big part of the story. I suppose there are legitimate debates about the right of a country to 'defend its interests'. But how far should our 'interests' extend? Don't our students have the right to be a part of this discussion, or to at least be prepared to take part in the discussion?

I recently wrote about these thoughts in my blog (http://brain-and-mind.blogspot.com/), but really would like to know from a history teacher whether these types of things do come up in high school history classes. Would it be difficult to include these issues in the curriculum? Perhaps, I'm overstating the notion (above) that our policy has been guided often by business interests. Curious to know your thoughts. Thanks, Jon

August 13, 2011 at 7:38 AM

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