Social Studies 30: May 2017

Last week, and through creating your projects, you have been looking at how dictatorships can be cruel and completely reject the values of liberalism. From their perspective, the leaders feel completely justified in doing so. However, from our liberal perspective, we have a hard time understanding how people can be so cruel and target specific groups and treat them unfairly or unjustly. This is why so many people supported Trump's bombing in Syria - from a Western perspective, attacking your own people with chemical weapons is totally and completely abhorrent. Many see Trump's actions as a way to stand up for the rights of the people in Syria. The attack on a dictatorial regime who does not support human rights, which are seen as essential in liberal nations, is justified as you are supporting the protection of rights for all people. This goes hand in hand with the justification for the imposition of liberal values on other countries - if we all have the same world view and accept and protect the same ideals, then the world would be a more peaceful and prosperous place. This is easier said than done.

What we will be looking at this week is the reasoning behind why liberal nations have tried to impose their ideals on other countries. From our perspective, it is the most fair and just system to use in your country. But isn't it a little ironic that an ideology that's based on choice and individual rights and freedoms is imposed on other nations??

One example of the imposition of liberalism: The War on Iraq in 2003. Click here for an essay describing the explicit and implicit reasons behind why the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 (Canada did not participate in this war, but we did increase our military presence in Afghanistan to compensate for some of the US military going into Iraq). Click here for a video to see the timeline of the War in Iraq. Essentially, the reason for the US occupation in Iraq was to help them build a functioning democracy - this would help them and prevent future disputes with other countries. Click here to see what life was like in Iraq 2 years after the US withdrew from the country.

There is much debate about the effectiveness of imposing liberalism on a country that is not prepared to embrace the ideology or doesn't want to embrace it. Look at Germany after WWI - forcing a democracy on a country ill-equipped to run a functioning and effective democracy at the time was one reason that allowed Hitler to eventually seize power. So what's the right answer?? That's what we will be talking about for the next 2 weeks.

Really great series on the War on Terror

What will we be doing this week?

Monday:

Notes - what's the rationale for imposing liberalism?
Focused debate

You will be given a perspective to argue from. You don't get a choice. Fun!

War on Terror - A recent imposition of liberalism??

Pick groups for a group presentation on the Cold War

Groups will be picked for you
You will be assessed on the quality of your group work (by your peers) and your presentation (by me)
Presentations will be NEXT TUESDAY in class
They will need to be emailed to me at the beginning of class AT THE LATEST

Tuesday:

Work on Cold War Presentations for the entire block

Wednesday:

Notes - Start of the Cold War

Continue working on presentations

Thursday:

Rants by Natasha, Soyoung and Kristen
Practice Writing Assignment:

30-1: Arguments/Evidence for Assignment 2
30-2: Arguments/Evidence OR Analysis of the issue for Assignment 3

You can also work on dictatorship project
Or you can work on your presentation.

This week, we are going to be going through two different dictatorships: The Communist dictatorship under Stalin in the USSR and the Fascist dictatorship under Hitler in Germany. The biggest thing that you need to focus on is looking at what it was specifically that these dictatorships rejected about liberalism and exactly how they intended to fix it.

List of Dictatorships

Last week, we looked at 5 techniques that dictators use and how that helps them to maintain control. Like we discussed in class, not all dictatorships use all of these characteristics, but they will use some. The stricter the dictatorship, the more techniques that will be used. The main point being that there needs to be a different interpretation of the word freedom and that it is not individual rights that will help achieve the common good of society, but that people give up some of their liberties to help society as a whole to be successful. Only when a society looks out for each other and has common goals to achieve can it truly be successful.

This will pretty much the only week we are going to spend specifically on dictatorships - a lot more of the detail will come in completing your projects. Like I said in class, I am highly recommending that you hand in your assignment on May 25 - BEFORE grad with a hard deadline of June 2.