Social 20
Nationalism Essay: 2
What fosters Canadian nationalism or at the very least- makes Canadians want to remain Canadian? Is it our unanimous love for hockey, our patronage of French and English or our role in the world? Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the 15th Prime Minister of Canada, writes in his book Federalism, Nationalism and Reason that ‘will’ rather than the aforementioned factors of geography, common language, common culture is the most critical to the ‘foundation of the nation’. He furthers his point by comparing the United States and Switzerland to Brazil and Belgium. All of the states are host to a variety of cultures and languages to Belgium and Brazil and yet the former have a much stronger sense of national cohesiveness than their counterparts- a factor that Trudeau …show more content…
What Trudeau fails to recognize is that a nation and a state are not necessarily the same especially in countries such as Canada, where a multitude of cultural groups reside. The rights and interests of the minorities can never be truly placed first because even a representative democracy must give in to the will of the majority. Thus, for individuals to have will which holds a country containing minorities together, there have to be incentives in place that counteract any ethnic tensions. In Canada, these incentives manifest themselves as: (i) history and (ii) material benefit. These factors, along with time and governmental support help to create a national identity for individuals to be loyal to, which subsequently leads to civic nationalism. Therefore, while Trudeau is correct in his support for ‘will’, he is wrong to not recognize that it originates from a larger national identity created by history and the
Nationalism Essay: 2
What fosters Canadian nationalism or at the very least- makes Canadians want to remain Canadian? Is it our unanimous love for hockey, our patronage of French and English or our role in the world? Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the 15th Prime Minister of Canada, writes in his book Federalism, Nationalism and Reason that ‘will’ rather than the aforementioned factors of geography, common language, common culture is the most critical to the ‘foundation of the nation’. He furthers his point by comparing the United States and Switzerland to Brazil and Belgium. All of the states are host to a variety of cultures and languages to Belgium and Brazil and yet the former have a much stronger sense of national cohesiveness than their counterparts- a factor that Trudeau …show more content…
What Trudeau fails to recognize is that a nation and a state are not necessarily the same especially in countries such as Canada, where a multitude of cultural groups reside. The rights and interests of the minorities can never be truly placed first because even a representative democracy must give in to the will of the majority. Thus, for individuals to have will which holds a country containing minorities together, there have to be incentives in place that counteract any ethnic tensions. In Canada, these incentives manifest themselves as: (i) history and (ii) material benefit. These factors, along with time and governmental support help to create a national identity for individuals to be loyal to, which subsequently leads to civic nationalism. Therefore, while Trudeau is correct in his support for ‘will’, he is wrong to not recognize that it originates from a larger national identity created by history and the