From: thood@corvus.matrox.com (Thomas Hood)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Access to English schools
Date: 2 Sep 92 17:58:53 GMT
Distribution: can
Organization: Matrox Ltd.

plante@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Frederic Plante) writes:

>thood@corvus.matrox.com (Thomas Hood) writes:

>>Quebec is not the best place to seek a liberal-rights utopia
>>because, of all western countries, it has spent the least time in
>>the modern era: perhaps two decades. For the same reason, it does not
>>idolize objectivity: its concerns are articulated subjectively, and it
>>is this subjectivity that anglophones as modernists misinterpret
>>as bad faith, disguising hostile intentions.  The subjectivity can
>>be self-serving, but it can also be sympathetic.

>Ca c'est de la grosse bullshit.  La societe quebecoise est la societe la
>plus post-moderne au monde.

I wish you would read more carefully.  In another article, you suggested
I had insulted French Canadians when I would never do that; you said
I had disguised collective as individual rights when I certainly did
not; here you have ignored my explicit definition of "modern".

>C'est le reste du Canada qui nous suit
>peniblement.  Le Quebec avait une charte des droits avant que le Canada
>en ait une.  Dans les faits, les quebecois sont beaucoup plus 
>individualistes que la plupart des canadiens, et sont beaucoup
>plus respectueux des droits individuels (les homosexuels sont beaucoup
>plus accepte ici que dans le CSQ), sauf par rapport a la culture et
>la langue, parce que nous sommes minoritaires et que nous avons de la
>difficulte a integrer les nouveaux arrivants (a cause de notre voisin
>du sud). 
>[...]
>Comme societe moderne, le Quebec a depasse le reste du Canada depuis
>longtemps.

Quebecers are liberal... except when it comes to culture and language.
That's a huge "except."  In fact, the lack of openness in culture
goes further towards explaining the difficulty of integrating
immigrants than the influence of our southern neighbour.

I do not claim that Quebecers are less individual than other Canadians,
and if you take their freedom away, they react like anyone else -- with
anger.  However, the whole justification for language laws has been
derived from the premises that liberty is less important in the end
than cultural continuity and that individual rights are balanced by
collective rights, premises that reject modernity and its insistence
upon liberty, the individual, the equality of all persons, and so on.
I simply suggested a reason for this unmodernity -- late modernization.
By this I do not mean that Quebec is out of date.

All I ask is that you and other nationalists defend the liberal rights
you claim to value so much, and limit them only as demonstrably
justifiable in a free and democratic (and as you prefer, predominantly
French-speaking) society.  Limiting the freedom of choice of immigrants
has been justified according to the principle of French predominance.

But the exclusion of _all_ immigrants from English schools, which is
not essential, has not been demonstrably justified, impairs Steve
Potter's individual right to choose how to educate his children, and
threatens the collective right of English Quebecers to separate schools.
The sign law has not been demonstrably justified, impairs the individual
businessman's right to self-expression and impairs the collective right
of English Quebec to public visibility -- the very same collective right
that the very same law was ostensibly designed to protect.

>On dirait que vous prenez les quebecois pour des enfants, M. Hood.
>Frederic Plante

Absolutely not, Mr. Plante.  Please retract that statement.

--
Thomas Hood                                                    thood@matrox.com
Montreal
Newsgroups: can.politics