OK, if I understand you're telling me that fundamentalism is a disease and that the Bouchard-Taylor is there to get rid of it.
Or to express it. The vast majority of opinions we hear on the subject until now are based, implicitly or explicitly, on the principle that values such as equality between men and women define the essence of the Quebec nation. And I agree: the Quebec of today shows a very broad consensus that affirms the universal right to follow the traditional male (while implying that its intrinsic superiority over the traditional female - talk to the men and women who believe their children deserve more attention than their careers).
But Quebec, not Quebec where my parents grew up there. There are less than fifty years, the "fundamental and intrinsic values" mentioned here (and that's being built in barrier against certain minorities) were far from unanimous, or even collect more than a minority of opinions. This is precisely what gets on my kidneys, the idea that the speech dominant current is the only one that helps define us, that everything that came before was an aberration that has nothing to do with our deepest nature and especially the current state of things is intended to remain intact until the Big Crunch. It is, in other words, a blatant lack of historical perspective, and it is the same psychological process of deception that characterizes fundamentalism and totalitarianism.
OK no no no. The Family Rosary, books to the index, the Duplessis Orphans, I do not want more than you get back. Nevertheless, the essentialist attitude I'm talking about here is to render the unhealthy relationship that is relationship with our own history.
It is first and foremost an ignorance breeds ignorance. If the social history of Quebec has resulted in "Before" and "After" the Quiet Revolution, we can afford to say that no great thing has changed in Quebec culture between 1608 and 1960. And if it is asserted that no great thing has changed in the culture of Quebec between 1608 and 1960, it was really a superficial knowledge of the history of Quebec.
But it is especially the ramifications of the place it gives to secularism that worry me. Implied throughout this beautiful essentialist discourse is the belief that in Quebec's history, religion is a pathological phenomenon and outside us. The central role played by the Catholic Church in education (and thus the transmission of culture) in Quebec as a surface phenomenon, a big black hole that played no role in what Quebec is TODAY 'hui. That attendance at the church by our own grandparents is the result of oppression or external, is a betrayal of the fatherland, a form of mental illness, but certainly not an expression of their culture - a culture whose Ours is a direct descendant (of course, hey!).
Principles secularism that wants to impose "alien minorities" (the phrase is vulgar, but describes the image that we have people designated by it) through the Bouchard-Taylor, we must pretend to take wedded to become the principles that guide our laws. And if there is hell-bent without thinking, it must be applied on an equal basis, to the Catholic Church like other religions. If we allowed students to take an examination because of Yom Kippur or the Eid al-Fitr, it becomes difficult to leave everyone on Friday.
In other words, after having denied an entire section of his past, Quebec is in the process of erasing the last traces live by inadvertence, a side effect that we profess hatred toward certain religions that are alien to us (regardless of our openness to people who the practice). And all this with a blind conviction that what exists now is the only possible basis for the future.
Torpinne. Good thing the whole pathology has evaporated with the Quiet Revolution. * * *
Yep, I'm back as promised. Two relatively minor-change-this year:
In one, "The Embassy of Trépanistan" no longer "in Istanbul." I re-crossed the pond and now live the United States. The precise location is a state secret, but say there are big opportunities for us to win the World Series and the Superbowl in the next few months. Yankees suck!
Two, I get weekly. It was already more or less the case last year, but it is now official, Ambassador tickets appear Friday.
One thing has not changed: I continue to be ben ben glad you come take a look at my little paper ...
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