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Lies My Teacher Told Me
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When students are asked what their least favorite subject in school is, they overwhelmingly say history. History classes tend to have the greatest percentage of semi-conscious students. Is that because history is just inherently boring? Historian and history-book critic James Loewen says no. After studying a dozen high school history textbooks, Loewen concluded that the vast majority of them are “an embarrassing amalgam of bland optimism, blind patriotism, and misinformation pure and simple, weighing in at an average of four-and-a-half pounds and 888 pages.” Today we spend the hour with James Loewen, author of the best-selling book, “Lies My teacher told me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.”

Loewen is a familiar voice on Pacifica Radio. He is a professor of sociology at …

“History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.” — Maya Angelou

“There is more logic in humor than in anything else because humor is truth.” — Victor Borges

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George Carlin – It’s Bad for Ya
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More than one year ago on June 22, 2008, one of the greatest and most influential stand-up comedians of all time, died. George Dennis Patrick Carlin was 71 years old – he was struck by heart failure just one month after he performed his 14th and final HBO special, just released on DVD called It’s Bad for Ya. He won 5 Grammy awards, his last one awarded posthumously for this final HBO performance. Just 4 days before he died, he was announced as the winner of the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor by the Kennedy Center. Long-time Pacifica associate him closely with this network – when Carlin performed his infamous routine “Seven Words You can’t Say on Television” on WBAI …

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The Living Dead

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President Obama was recently asked by a world leader at the G 20 summit why in the course of the healthcare debate were some Americans depicting him as Hitler. The specter of facism and Nazi ideology conflated with the idea of socialism and hence government-run healthcare is a common thread in the talking points of many right-wing commentators and politicians in the US. But is the connection historically accurate? In fact, World War II Nazi ideology was strikingly characterized by nationalism, rather than socialism. And in fact, it was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR, that helped defeat Nazi Germany in World War II. The history of World War II has been distorted so heavily that most Americans today know it only as “The …

“A country without a memory, is a country of madmen.” — George Santayana

Our weekly edition is a nationally syndicated one-hour digest of the best of our daily coverage.

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This week on Uprising:

* Gar Alperovitz: America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy
* Mike Davis: Budget Cuts, Tuition Hikes, Spark Statewide Walkouts of UC Campuses

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America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy

As world leaders gather in Pittsburgh as this program is being recorded, talk of an economic recovery is high on the agenda. The so-called Group of 20 countries, or G20, are nearing agreement on economic cooperation that would require periodic reviews of their economic policies by …

There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community and communication — John Dewey

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The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics

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As President Obama continues to push for reform of the nation’s health care system, right-wing resistance has encapsulated itself in emotionally charged, yet simple phrases. “Death panels,” “socialism,” and “government takeover,” are immediately recognizable and updated additions to today’s lexicon of conservatism. Obama, in his address on health care to a joint session of Congress earlier this month, tried to reason away such words as obfuscations in the debate calling notions of ‘death panels’ plain and simple lies. However, in his attempts to garner support for his reforms, is the President failing to communicate? George Lakoff, linguist, cognitive scientist, and author of several books on the subject of politics and language believes so. Whereas the right …

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” — Maria Robinson