This is the last entry you can comment on for the month of February.
How much of
a problem is it that countries tend to deny their own faults and
exaggerate the faults of neighboring countries as the author seems to claim
that Canada does in regards to the US?
Does "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" sound better or worse
than "Peace, Order, and Good Government" as a goal? Does the latter too often end up as an excuse
for (racist) authoritarianism?
Well, I was not aware of the fact that Canada and the US have some kind of national mottos, but I believe mottos fit political parties better than states. Therefore, I agree with the author that Canadians should not compare to the United States using this motto. As the article shows, Canadian motto of "Peace, Order, and Good Government" got a bit ironic meaning at some points of history. Similarly to Canada, some Slovaks like to consider themselves as a "peaceful nation". However, could be a nation, which de facto aligned itself with the Third Reich, considered a peaceful one? But Slovaks also do not consider themselves being imperialistic, do they? Canadians face almost the same problem, as although they often (as I understand it) consider Canada a peaceful and fair country, there are events, like the attack on Shidane Arone, which lead to questioning of this view. This questioning can lead to two possible results, either people will found out that national mottos are absolutely abstract and worth only little attention, or they will forget about the history and use mottos as a substitute of facts. Personally, I hope common sense and facts will be the winner in this case.
ReplyDeleteAdam,
DeleteLike you, I cannot understand how some people can say that we are a peaceful country. In WW2, Slovakia was more than keen to send any Jewish person from our area to Nazi concentration camp. Not talking about communist era and it still did not get much better after revolution in 1989. We could also take a look at more current events like the murder of Kuciak and his spouse just a year ago. As Daniel Panneton wrote a broad list of not very peaceful things about his country in this article, it would not be difficult to write such one about our country. But like you, I also hope that common sense and facts will win not just in the case of Canadians being too proud of their motto but also in Slovakia and instead of trying to make our country look better we will also make it better.
People always like to compare themselves and the group they belong to with people in other - different and rival group. People talk about other countries’ bad historical moments, inconvenient conditions for living or other things in order to make their country look better. That would not be a problem if there is not a phenomenon called hypocrisy. As it was written in the article, Canada, as a country with a motto emphasizing the word peace by putting it at the first place, is an exemplary case. It is often considered by people (both its citizens and people from other countries) to be a very peaceful country with the right order. Apparently, Canadian people are taught and pushed by the society to be anti-American and to see their country much better as America in every possible way. Although they might have not done as many harmful things as some other countries (e.g. America), it cannot be said that Canada is a completely peaceful and innocent heaven on the Earth. They did their things (many of them were mentioned in the article) and they should be aware of them and rather than pretending that they did not happen for keeping “their brand away from damage”, they should accept them and learn from their history so it will not be repeated.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing I would like to comment on is the motto by itself. I think that it is very risky to even discuss what is a good government and what such one should look like. Canada’s motto basically claims that a good government is the Canadian’s one. Always. That is a very strong statement because there is not such a thing as a perfect government. By perfect I mean a government that would be considered as a good one by everyone. Other problem can happen that the government would not be good, it would be even more than bad – promoting fascistic or other not very moral ideas – but it would defend itself by saying that the Canadian government is nothing but good.
Just by putting the phrase good government to their motto, I would say that Canadian motto is not so good and therefore the American one is maybe better. Although, that does not mean America is a better country. They are the same hypocrites as Canadians are. The word liberty in their motto is “nice” but if we want to talk about liberty in America, black people would certainly have much to talk about.