As we enjoy this national day off, John Robson has penned a patriotic column that almost brings a tear to the eye:
I would like to be more positive. But I cannot do a Maple Leaf Forever kind of column, not least because that aspect of our heritage is not exactly popular with the smart set. Americans generally lay aside their grievances on the 4th of July because they regard their history as fundamentally glorious. But here the official view is quite different. Our statesmen were bigots, our industrialists rapacious, our scholars hegemonist, our soldiers war criminals, and our past a shabby nightmare from which we are only now awakening.Okay, I said almost.
That's probably why all stores are closed today.
Another illiterate blogging rightist without a clue.
Our scholars were 'hegemonist' .Word does not exist in the English language .
Hegemony means "aggression or expansionism by large nations in an effort to achieve world domination"
Or
"Predominant influence"
Wrong on all counts .
Another neo-rightist blithering idiot .
Except for the fact that he was quoting a columnist who happens to be a "professional" journalist. Maybe instead of going on an ad-hominem rant for no reason at all, you could actually pay attention to the substance of the post. And clean up your own grammar and punctuation while you're at it.
HM just made John Robson's point, particularly this part from the second paragraph: ... that aspect of our heritage is not exactly popular with the smart set. Americans generally lay aside their grievances on the 4th of July because they regard their history as fundamentally glorious.
Hegemonist is the adjectival form of hegemony ( www.answers.com/hegemony ). From the Oxford University Press political dictionary...
"Hegemony: When one social class exerts power over others beyond that accounted for by coercion or law, it may be described as hegemonic, drawing on the Greek word hegemon, meaning chieftain. Thus the bourgeoisie was regarded as hegemonic within capitalist society by Gramsci, who believed their power depended on the permeation by bourgeois values of all organs of society. Hegemony has also been attributed to other social institutions. Indeed, the phrase first entered the vocabulary of the left following the Russian Revolution of 1905 when Plekhanov used it to describe the relation of the Bolshevik party to the proletariat. [...]"
If I may make a general suggestion, before declaring that an English word does not exist, try consulting both the Compact OED and Webster's Third. While you're there, try looking up the words "sentence" and "paragraph"; they're wonderful things.
I hope that all those to the north had a wonderful Canada Day. I plan to have a wonderful Independence Day on Wednesday, celebrating the country that gave shelter, freedom, and opportunity to the wretched refuse who were my ancestors. I continue to be grateful that our neighbor to the north is a civilized country, and one on the right side.
Vit
*****While you're there, try looking up the words "sentence" and "paragraph"; they're wonderful things.******
are you Joe King?????
dyslexics have hard time with large words like "a" and "the", never mind whole sentences, and paragraphs are totally alien to them.
The rant is correct in that, historically and pathalogically, much of the culture of political/ruling class Canada (Ottawa/Montreal/Totonto) were scaliwags liars cheats, patrons and profiteering camp followers...we had a series of cartels (Family compacts) here that pillaged the land and the people...but as always WHY oh WHY does anyone base their love of nation/country on government and the fraudulent patriotism it manufactures to cover generations of sin by the political class?
My love of my heireditary land of Canada,( of which I am a sixth generation citizen)and my identity as a Canadian is NOT defined by politics and the political class ...it is defined by the legacy of the people who percervered here against the hostile elements of weather and repressive politics to personally prosper and build a nation by default...that common pioneering stock left a culture...a culture that is distinctly different than the shallow corporate manufactured image of Canadians or the disingenuous image of the Canadian patriot spun by the 3rd and 4th estate political class.
And BTW this Canadian's beer glass has been half full all day ;-)
Cheers and happy Dominion day.
An optimist sees the glass half full.
A pessimist sees the glass half empty.
An engineer asks: what is the optimal fluid fill level for this vessel?
Canada today is “deux nations.” There are the people who speak and think in French; and the people who speak and think in English. Together they make up one nation, with a continuous history, of more than five centuries. And then there are the people who speak, effectively, no language; who are deracinated, who have no history. That is the other nation. There is very little communication between these two nations -- the “old” Canada, and the “new” Canada -- because little communication is possible between two such groups. The one is aging and shrinking, the other expanding while growing ever younger. (Yet all trends are reversible.)
Demographically, but also spiritually. Those who have no language, no culture, no religion, no sense of past, and therefore of destiny, remain ever young. Outwardly they may become old and wrinkly, but inwardly they retain the mind of the pre-school child, unformed and cloudless.
http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/
WLMR - Well said. Thank you for putting into words the way I think I feel.
"Canada is two nations"? I think not. "Those who have no language, no culture, no religion, no sense of past, and therefore of destiny [...]"? Name one.
On the one hand, Canada is a geographically delimited space on the surface of Earth. On the other hand, Canada is the set of humans who are citizens of Canada. Now clap your hands: Canada is the geopolitical system resulting from the union of the two.
A heartfelt aesthetic appreciation for Canada is a good thing, just don't let it go to your head. A heady critique of the Canada system is a good thing, just don't let it go to your heart.
"Another illiterate blogging rightist without a clue.
Our scholars were 'hegemonist' .Word does not exist in the English language .
Hegemony means "aggression or expansionism by large nations in an effort to achieve world domination"
Or
"Predominant influence"
Wrong on all counts .
Another neo-rightist blithering idiot ."
neo-rightist? This example of the left might as well have a neon sign above his head saying look how stupid I am.
When I experimented with radio-controlled model aircraft as a lad, I was a neo-Wrightist. Does that count?
Sorry about that, in retrospect I realise that was an ad-homonym argument.
Pedantic...a good word to reference from any dictionary.
Yet it remains the case that pedantic can be a vector for droll, if one is witty enough about it, and, in this case, one appreciates tautologies.
It does now. ;-)
Seriously, one of the beauties of the English language is that you can take a word an modify it to be a different part of speech. You can literally verb a noun.
Indeed it can be, but rarely is.
Yes indeed, Mike, English is in that degree unlike any other language. Perhaps that's at least partly why witty neologisms (such as my bureausclerosis invention) and droll mixed metaphors are a hobby of mine (and thanks to the Friends of SDA who put up with me).
Point taken, Claire. I try. I guess we just have to wake up and smell the writing on the wall comming. You know what they say, you can't walk a mile while looking through another man's shoes. You can lead a stitch in time to water, but you can't make it think.
(By the way, don't I get some sort of award for ad-homonym argument?)
If I am drinking the glass is half-empty,if I am pouring the glass is half-full.Either way I am happy.
"(By the way, don't I get some sort of award for ad-homonym argument?)"- Vitruvius at July 2, 2007 8:11 PM
While you definitely should get something better, all I can offer you is the felis corpulentis award for best creative pedantry on this thread.
As my old English teacher would have said, after having passed a similar one: "nyeh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh".
(By the way, are you sure you are not he?)
Thanks, Felis. Just remember, folks, when you're designing your optimum fluid fill levels, to not forget the findings of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board's forensic investigation into the Isomerization Unit explosion at the Texas City refinery: www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9JY3eT4cdM
"We could do far, far worse, and we should remember and build on that. Canada remains a free country despite all the scoffing that phrase tends to elicit."
I think this phrase sums up the message of this article nicely. I have often pointed out that adversity did not stop our ancestors from trying. That they tried (and sometimes failed) is why we are where we are today. I often wonder what those pioneering people would have thought of the plodding, pitiful way we make decisions these days.
"We could do far, far worse, and we should remember and build on that. Canada remains a free country despite all the scoffing that phrase tends to elicit."
Slight correction: Canada remains FREER than some countries....
......and only because we don't keep large domestic standing armies, large armed enforcement agencies and federal secret police....but it's not like our Ottawa masters wouldn't like to...they just spent the wad on buying votes and running patronage cartels rather than making the nation into an armed camp ready for martial law and the police state....not that they wouldn't like to....but filling their pockets from the treasury came easy and took priority over martial subjugation of the population....so in a way, our Kleptocrat's greed saved us from the fate Britain and other quasi martial law nations have endured.
Yes Canada remains freer than many nations but I say we can do much better...remember this every time you must ask government's permission to do something...we cannot be "free" per se and also be the worlds most over governed/regulated nation.
"Peace order and good government" has been used to rationalize a excess of statist authoritarianism in this nation , both historically ansd in the modern era. Your and my concept of peace order and good government is much different from the political/martial class concept of peace and order...to the statist social engineering class (who infest federal bureaucratic environs) "peace, order, good govt." is just the absence of individual consciousness and questioning of, and opposition to, authority.
The new urban anthill culture may seem free to a worker ant because they ALLOW him to walk freely to labor at his state-supporting job, but then he has never experienced true freedom so his concept of freedom is relative to the hive.....this is why breaking through the MSM-instilled anthil conditioning is tough.
There are too many social engineers in our 3rd and 4th estates producing mountains of legislation fermenting the anthill society to truthfully say Canada is a free nation...if you believe this so vehemently go out to speaker's corners and publicly state your religion teaches that homosexuality is a degenerate practice and a mortal sin....then go home and forget to renew your duck gun permit or remit this year's extortion on your property ( property assessment)...we'll watch the "freedom" reign....and while they haul you off to the gulag for your politically incorrect crimes, I hope they pass the Caledonia occupation site where terrorists have held the government and the people hostage for over a year in the suspension of equality before the rule of law....look up "dystopia" in yer Websters.
Canada will be "free" when government regains respect for the common private individual and accepts him as the core element of government and returns the individual to stand equal with the ruling class before the law...and get our governers to stop chasing the roll of faux vice regal colonial masters.
wlmr. canada will be free when all laws passed apply to all canadians.
Jmorrison: Canada will be free when the people set the government's agenda and not their ruling class patrons.
I have not seen a Government since the Deifenbaker's that didn;t have it's own agenda. This is the way of modern statism. Governments no longer do the will of the majortity they carry an un stated policy agenda...sometimes they try to sell it to us before an election but lately they don't bother.
When all major parties in a so call democracy carry their own policy agendas and those agendas did not come from general consensus then you have a dystopian state which simply elects dictators every 4 years.
Canadians laugh at Castor's antics but we are not far off...our government is just better at concealing the tyranny and softening it with "nannyism".