Scottish Independence: Quebec Edition

[Berkut]

So you define a "right" as something that just kind of happens, like the "right to have government services in your language"?

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Are you concerned about all the non-English, non-French speaking people in Quebec's "right" to have someone serve them in their language? Or are their rights not important, since you've defined a "right" to other people being forced to speak some arbitrary language (that you happen to speak).

Oh wait - in the Perfect Quebec, there would be no such people, hence the problem would be solved, of course. You guys have made me go from "Meh, what do I care" to full on absolute opposition to the idea of what you would want in a separate nation of Quebec. And I am a dis-interested third party who has no dog in the race at all. It sounds very much like Quebec would be vastly less liberal and free than any part of Canada, and certainly Quebec itself would be vastly more restrictive and intolerant than the province of Quebec in the country of Canada. I suppose if I were a French speaking person who wants my ethnicity to get special treatment, and the federal government refused to allow it, I would be pro-independence as well.

And we are right back to what I've been saying all along - the only concrete and real positions you have all appear to revolve around the desire to institutionalize bigotry. We want to make sure people speak OUR language! We want to make sure we can keep non-French speakers from immigrating! Bah, what a bunch of d-bags.

You don't have a "right" to have everyone in your nation speak the same language that you want to speak. That is just plain silly. Like all the other examples of "strangling" you keep coming up with.

[Grey Fox]

Grallon & Viper disagree but they are fair points Berkut and I kinda agree.

It annoys me that my entire cultural identity is define by the fact that I speak French. It's important part of it, yes but it's the catalyst of that identity not the identity in of itself.

I understand where it is coming from tho. English-Canadian(really Victorian British bullshit) found passive-agressive way to oppress the french majority in Quebec for 200 years that it's going to take a couple of generations to get over.

[Admiral Yi]

Berkut, I believe the rights viper refers to are enshrined in Canadian law.

[Barrister]

And we are right back to what I've been saying all along - the only concrete and real positions you have all appear to revolve around the desire to institutionalize bigotry. We want to make sure people speak OUR language! We want to make sure we can keep non-French speakers from immigrating! Bah, what a bunch of d-bags.

You don't have a "right" to have everyone in your nation speak the same language that you want to speak. That is just plain silly. Like all the other examples of "strangling" you keep coming up with.

And I don't see a problem with Quebec (and the Quebecois) wanting to ensure that the French language continues to survive and thrive within Quebec.

Berkut - it's easy to be blasé about languages when you speak what is the single most dominant language on the planet.

[Berkut]

Grallon & Viper disagree but they are fair points Berkut and I kinda agree.

It annoys me that my entire cultural identity is define by the fact that I speak French. It's important part of it, yes but it's the catalyst of that identity not the identity in of itself.

I understand where it is coming from tho. English-Canadian(really Victorian British bullshit) found passive-agressive way to oppress the french majority in Quebec for 200 years that it's going to take a couple of generations to get over.

I just don't understand the idea that your cultural identity is under attack in a Western, modern, liberal country like Canada.

What I suspect is really happening is that the culture is in fact eroding just because that is what happens to isolated cultures in diverse environments - they blend in with the cultures around them, and this is a perfectly normal, even natural, process. People see that their kids don't speak quite as much French as they do, and they get upset, and they want someone to blame.

I don't doubt that there is historical injustice, passive aggressive or even aggressive-aggressive. England and France have had historical conflicts, and I am quite aware of the power of tribal thinking to create animosity, and then throw in the religious angle as well, and yeah, it comes as no surprise that the French and English portions of Canada have had their historical issues, and since the English were dominant, I would frankly be shocked if there weren't plenty of examples of historical discrimination.

But we live in modern, liberal democracies. And if someone is claiming that this discrimination is ongoing and active today (much less to the extent that a minority on the body politic is "being strangled"), what they are really saying is that the political system overall (in this case the Canadian political system) is NOT in fact particularity liberal or democratic as we understand the term.

And I am frankly skeptical of that claim. Note that not winning in the battle of ideas within a democracy is NOT the same things as being oppressed or not having a voice. And that seems to be what grallon and viper are really saying - they cannot convince enough other people to think like they do, so they cannot get things setup the way they want, so they feel they should have the right to simply secede. To basically just decide that if they cannot convince enough of their fellow countrymen to think in their fashion, they should just find an area where their thinking has at least 51% of the vote and bail.

It is like the worst possible example of the tyranny of the majority - one where we get to create the majority we wish so we can impose the tyranny we demand.

[viper37]

So you define a "right" as something that just kind of happens, like the "right to have government services in your language"?

Is having a gun a right in your country?  Most poeple not from the US find it pretty silly that anyone is entitled to owning a gun.
How did it came to be a fundamental right of your country to eat a burger with your rifle?  Did it just "kind of happens"
...

[viper37]

What I suspect

I suspect you ignore how we came to that point.  Despite my previous explanations.

[Valmy]

Is having a gun a right in your country?  Most poeple not from the US find it pretty silly that anyone is entitled to owning a gun.
How did it came to be a fundamental right of your country to eat a burger with your rifle?  Did it just "kind of happens"
...

Well it made perfect sense when 99% of the population was rural and the plan was for the military to consist entirely of citizen militias armed with their own weapons.  That and the thing the British did that finally started the war was trying to seize people's guns.

Having said that in the 80s the majority of the population was for gun control.  The whole 'I should be able to carry an automatic rifle to shop at Target' thing is new.

[Berkut]

And we are right back to what I've been saying all along - the only concrete and real positions you have all appear to revolve around the desire to institutionalize bigotry. We want to make sure people speak OUR language! We want to make sure we can keep non-French speakers from immigrating! Bah, what a bunch of d-bags.

You don't have a "right" to have everyone in your nation speak the same language that you want to speak. That is just plain silly. Like all the other examples of "strangling" you keep coming up with.

And I don't see a problem with Quebec (and the Quebecois) wanting to ensure that the French language continues to survive and thrive within Quebec.

Berkut - it's easy to be blasé about languages when you speak what is the single most dominant language on the planet.

Meh, that is a cheap response Beebs. It is easy to be blase, but that doesn't mean I am in fact being blase. I would feel the same if I spoke some other language, or if I spoke English but lived somewhere where it wasn't the dominant language.

However, that isn't really the point.

The point is that speaking French in Quebec is something that French speakers want to do - so fine, let them speak French. What is stopping them? Is there some law against it? If there is, I would strongly oppose such a law.

So what is it about speaking French in Quebec that requires indepence in order to keep speaking it? Nothing - except for this:

I don't think the real problem is that people want to speak French and are not allowed - that isn't what upsets the grallons. It is that there are people who do not want to speak French, and THEY are allowed. The problem isn't that people are not allowed to speak French, the problem is that people are allowed to speak something else. They want the power to enforce French in some fashion, and they likely cannot do that while they are a subset of a greater political entity. They know that the trend is towards anglophone, and suspect that in the long run the only way to stop it is to mandate even me heavily that French be spoken whether people want to or not.

I think this is, frankly, a pretty terrible thing - it is just as bad to have french people force other to speak french than it is to have english people force the french to speak english. It is counter to liberal ideals to use the power of the state, IMO, to force some language preference on citizens. And that is why people like grallon want to form an independent Quebec - so they can have the power to do exactly what they accuse the Federal government of doing - legislate language.

[Berkut]

And we are right back to what I've been saying all along - the only concrete and real positions you have all appear to revolve around the desire to institutionalize bigotry. We want to make sure people speak OUR language! We want to make sure we can keep non-French speakers from immigrating! Bah, what a bunch of d-bags.

You don't have a "right" to have everyone in your nation speak the same language that you want to speak. That is just plain silly. Like all the other examples of "strangling" you keep coming up with.

And I don't see a problem with Quebec (and the Quebecois) wanting to ensure that the French language continues to survive and thrive within Quebec.

I don't see a problem with it either.

But that isn't what we are talking about - nobody is stopping anyone from working to see that French survives and thrives in Quebec.

There is a huge difference between working towards a desired goal, and just saying "How about we just create a country where the state has the power to simply demand that things work the way we want???"

[Barrister]

And we are right back to what I've been saying all along - the only concrete and real positions you have all appear to revolve around the desire to institutionalize bigotry. We want to make sure people speak OUR language! We want to make sure we can keep non-French speakers from immigrating! Bah, what a bunch of d-bags.

You don't have a "right" to have everyone in your nation speak the same language that you want to speak. That is just plain silly. Like all the other examples of "strangling" you keep coming up with.

And I don't see a problem with Quebec (and the Quebecois) wanting to ensure that the French language continues to survive and thrive within Quebec.

Berkut - it's easy to be blasé about languages when you speak what is the single most dominant language on the planet.

Meh, that is a cheap response Beebs. It is easy to be blase, but that doesn't mean I am in fact being blase. I would feel the same if I spoke some other language, or if I spoke English but lived somewhere where it wasn't the dominant language.

However, that isn't really the point.

The point is that speaking French in Quebec is something that French speakers want to do - so fine, let them speak French. What is stopping them? Is there some law against it? If there is, I would strongly oppose such a law.

So what is it about speaking French in Quebec that requires indepence in order to keep speaking it? Nothing - except for this:

I don't think the real problem is that people want to speak French and are not allowed - that isn't what upsets the grallons. It is that there are people who do not want to speak French, and THEY are allowed. The problem isn't that people are not allowed to speak French, the problem is that people are allowed to speak something else. They want the power to enforce French in some fashion, and they likely cannot do that while they are a subset of a greater political entity. They know that the trend is towards anglophone, and suspect that in the long run the only way to stop it is to mandate even me heavily that French be spoken whether people want to or not.

I think this is, frankly, a pretty terrible thing - it is just as bad to have french people force other to speak french than it is to have english people force the french to speak english. It is counter to liberal ideals to use the power of the state, IMO, to force some language preference on citizens. And that is why people like grallon want to form an independent Quebec - so they can have the power to do exactly what they accuse the Federal government of doing - legislate language.

No, I don't think it's a cheap point at all.  And wherever you might go in the world, you would find that English is still the dominant language world-wide (even if not in your particular corner of it).

Now there are better, and worse, ways to try and ensure the survival of the French language, but wanting to ensure that it does in fact survive seems like a perfectly valid policy to follow.

[Berkut]

Now there are better, and worse, ways to try and ensure the survival of the French language, but wanting to ensure that it does in fact survive seems like a perfectly valid policy to follow.

No argument from me, but that isn't what we are talking about.

[Razgovory]

So you define a "right" as something that just kind of happens, like the "right to have government services in your language"?

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

I don't disagree with the idea of a right to having government services in a language you can understand.  For instance, if I am put on trial I should be provided an interpreter so that I may be able aid in my own defense.  If I report a crime, the police should find someone who can speak to me so that I can properly report it.  I should be able to request government forms (like say, taxes), in a language I can understand.  Now obviously, there is a practical element to this.  The local police station may not have someone on hand at all times who can speak Albanian and so that service may be delayed till they can find some one, but a good faith effort must be attempted. I believe this is covered in the Equal protection clause.

[Barrister]

Alright, I shovelled out most of the pointless Quebec wankery into its own thread. Let's try not to shit this thread up again?

Holy crap - your "Quebec edition" thread has even more posts than this original thread. 

But while I thought (and continue to think) that the whole Quebec situation has very valid parallels to Scotland, it was hijacking the thread (and hence my own attempts to bring it back on topic).

[Jacob]

Alright, I shovelled out most of the pointless Quebec wankery into its own thread. Let's try not to shit this thread up again?

Holy crap - your "Quebec edition" thread has even more posts than this original thread. 

But while I thought (and continue to think) that the whole Quebec situation has very valid parallels to Scotland, it was hijacking the thread (and hence my own attempts to bring it back on topic).

It ain't "my" Quebec Edition thread, it's your Quebec Edition thread. And feel free to explore the exciting parallels in this thread.