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article found here: http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/index.cfm?page=article&article_id=2213
Interesting article. Makes one think about the responsibilities the citizens of this nation have or SHOULD have and if it is possible to fulfill these responsibilities to Canada and some other state. I guess it all comes down to ones own concept of citizenship and nationalism. I personally think it is disgusting that someone who wants to hold this nations highest office has not only sworn an oath of allegiance to another country, but is also refusing to abandon this loyalty.
Schizo-loyalism
If citizenship is reduced to feelings, it ceases to be true loyalty and obligation
Ezra Levant - January 15, 2007
In 1990, Norman Tebbit, the British Conservative politician, came up with the "cricket test" of loyalty. Observe an international cricket game, he said: "A large proportion of Britain's Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for? It's an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?"
If cheering for your home country is a test that can be put to cricket fans, surely it can be put to the man who would be Canada's Prime Minister, Stéphane Dion. Dion, the new Liberal leader, was born in Quebec, but actively sought out French citizenship as a young man, swearing loyalty to a foreign country at the same time that he dabbled in the separatist Parti Québécois. It's unclear just what team Dion would have cheered for back then, but it's safe to say it would not have been playing cricket.
Dion is no longer a Quebec separatist, but he continues to be a French citizen. That in itself is odd, especially for the leader of a party that has made a political fetish about the moral supremacy represented by "Canadian values," especially the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Obviously, Liberal nationalism is designed to demonstrate Canada's moral superiority to the United States--our medicare system, our peacekeepers, et cetera. But it seems that, to the Liberal party, French values are equal to Canadian values.
Or superior, if Dion's excuses are taken at face value. Having "multiple identities should be seen as an asset," Dion explained. An asset that the rest of us lack. What exactly does Dion get from his French citizenship that he does not get from his Canadian citizenship? What is it about their history that is superior to ours, or their laws or their culture? Is the Liberal mantra, that we are the best country in the world, put on hold when the comparator is France? "Canadian citizenship will give me my rights. Identity is the way I feel about the country," Dion explained. We've seen how Canadian citizenship can indeed grant rights--such as the right to a multimillion-dollar emergency evacuation from Lebanon for thousands of dual citizens over there. Yes, we are aware of Dion's rights, and those of other dual citizens. But what responsibilities to they have to Canada in return?
Identity is more than just Dion's "feelings" about Canada. Feelings may change with every breeze, but one's loyalty and duty ought to remain steadfast. In Dion's life, he has been loyal to Quebec, then France, now Canada. He is a man of whimsical feelings.
Part of this is the result of growing up in Quebec, where normal definitions of duty and loyalty and identity have been smashed to pieces over the past 40 years, as two generations of politicians told Quebecers they can be both independent and loyal, both Canadians first and Quebecers first, both distinct and equal, have "sovereignty association" and be a "nation within a nation." Such impossibilities--nuances, as the French might say--are ways of obscuring and blurring the truth. Dion's concepts of citizenship were so demolished, he had no idea how he sounded when he proudly stood by his French citizenship, and condemned anyone who dared question it.
Dion's poor English is excusable--though the press corps never granted Preston Manning's French such a pass, and Dion didn't have Manning's excuse of having lived in a unilingual city.
Dion's antipathy towards the West--his hostility to the oilpatch, his belief in the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly--are likely explained as much by ignorance about the West as by bigotry. But all of his questionable policies were immediately coloured by the indignance with which he refused to abandon his foreign oath of allegiance. It's one thing for a Quebecer to declare that he wants to dramatically increase the use of French in English Canada. It's quite another for a French citizen to say so. Dion doesn't get that. And that in itself is the problem: in terms of his cosmic arrogance, he truly does belong in France.
Interesting article. Makes one think about the responsibilities the citizens of this nation have or SHOULD have and if it is possible to fulfill these responsibilities to Canada and some other state. I guess it all comes down to ones own concept of citizenship and nationalism. I personally think it is disgusting that someone who wants to hold this nations highest office has not only sworn an oath of allegiance to another country, but is also refusing to abandon this loyalty.