Author Topic: Changing the Oath of Citizenship  (Read 1950 times)

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Offline SirJohn

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Re: Changing the Oath of Citizenship
« Reply #60 on: February 09, 2017, 12:23:22 pm »
Get this. Your perspective doesn't mean ****. That's the point. You don't get an opinion on how others have been affected by generations of abuse. Your perspective is to deny them their experiences because you're arrogant enough to think that your opinion on their lives is important. It's not.

Well, you certainly seem to spend enough time trying to convince everyone that we need to modify our behaviour and thinking based on their past experiences and your hand-wringing sense of liberal guilt. So you seem to care a great deal about us having the 'correct' perspective (ie, yours).

I suppose you're right my opinion doesn't matter. Neither does yours. So where does that leave us?

"When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals won't do." David Frum

Offline cybercoma

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Re: Changing the Oath of Citizenship
« Reply #61 on: February 09, 2017, 12:29:56 pm »
It leaves us with a government that added a line to the oath of citizenship that's utterly irrelevant in your life and mine, but could make a very big difference for people who were systematically abused by the government.

Offline cybercoma

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Re: Changing the Oath of Citizenship
« Reply #62 on: February 09, 2017, 12:38:40 pm »
Look, I've been disrespectful to you. So I apologize. What I'm trying to understand is the nature of your opposition to changing the oath? Do you value the tradition and believe it should be an unchanging text? Are you concerned that it elevates indigenous peoples above everyone else in society somehow? Honestly, I'm sorry for being so short with you, but help me try to understand your objection.

Offline SirJohn

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Re: Changing the Oath of Citizenship
« Reply #63 on: February 09, 2017, 03:10:07 pm »
It leaves us with a government that added a line to the oath of citizenship that's utterly irrelevant in your life and mine, but could make a very big difference for people who were systematically abused by the government.

How?
"When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals won't do." David Frum

Offline SirJohn

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Re: Changing the Oath of Citizenship
« Reply #64 on: February 09, 2017, 03:14:02 pm »
Look, I've been disrespectful to you. So I apologize. What I'm trying to understand is the nature of your opposition to changing the oath? Do you value the tradition and believe it should be an unchanging text? Are you concerned that it elevates indigenous peoples above everyone else in society somehow? Honestly, I'm sorry for being so short with you, but help me try to understand your objection.

My objections aren't exactly strenuous. I think the miserable state of existence of natives in Canada is a national disgrace. It ought to be the number one priority of any government, of any part of the political spectrum, to fix it. Unfortunately, I can see no way of doing that while maintaining the reservation system that keeps natives as separate people, not quite Canadians, living out in the boonies where there is nothing for them to do but get drunk, fight and fornicate. Making immigrants swear this oath will have little practical affect, but what it seems intended to do is perpetuate the attitude that the treaties are forever, the reservations are forever, and natives will never be Canadians, like everyone else. I don't see that as being in anyone's best interest, most especially that of the natives.
"When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals won't do." David Frum

Offline cybercoma

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Re: Changing the Oath of Citizenship
« Reply #65 on: February 09, 2017, 03:29:28 pm »
The "natives" don't see themselves as Canadians like any other and they're not. They had their own culture and political systems in place before European settlement here. They made agreements and in most cases those agreements were not made in good faith by the Europeans and that's never been reconciled. I agree with most of what you said, but the conflict is in this fact. The indigenous peoples aren't just another group of Canadians.

guest7

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Re: Changing the Oath of Citizenship
« Reply #66 on: February 09, 2017, 07:24:16 pm »
I haven't read treaties or even read about them in any more that the most general sense, but it occurs to me that when they were signed there was not a great deal of difference between the situations of natives and non natives. 

I imagine most young natives growing up on reserves today would want nothing quite as much than being just another group of Canadians.

Offline JMT

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Re: Changing the Oath of Citizenship
« Reply #67 on: February 09, 2017, 07:34:46 pm »
I imagine most young natives growing up on reserves today would want nothing quite as much than being just another group of Canadians.

I used to imagine that too.  I was wrong.

Offline ?Impact

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Re: Changing the Oath of Citizenship
« Reply #68 on: February 09, 2017, 07:37:50 pm »
I imagine most young natives growing up on reserves today would want nothing quite as much than being just another group of Canadians.

There is nothing stopping them from moving off the reserves.

guest7

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Re: Changing the Oath of Citizenship
« Reply #69 on: February 09, 2017, 07:48:12 pm »
There is nothing stopping them from moving off the reserves.

You would think so, wouldn't you?  Why do so many of them kill themselves?

I would also imagine, (and I want to make it plain here, that, as an immigrant I know little about the plight of Canada's natives, and am just saying what occurs to me) that they are terrified of doing that.  There are some, that I know personally, who live off reserve and do well, but there are a lot more who seem to do do poorly.

The picture I get is of young natives, with IThings and internet things and all kinds of social media things telling them what a big world it is out there, and they wake up every day in some craphole with prospects of ever seeing it all = zero.  Pass the glue.

I think that saying there is nothing stopping them from moving off the reserves is akin to saying about drug addicts, there is nothing stopping them from giving up the habit.  I just don't think it's as easy as it sounds.

I do not subscribe to the idea that they are different, or special, except as cybercoma says, legally speaking.  I don't think that helps the individuals.

Offline SirJohn

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Re: Changing the Oath of Citizenship
« Reply #70 on: February 10, 2017, 12:34:41 pm »
The "natives" don't see themselves as Canadians like any other and they're not. They had their own culture and political systems in place before European settlement here. They made agreements and in most cases those agreements were not made in good faith by the Europeans and that's never been reconciled. I agree with most of what you said, but the conflict is in this fact. The indigenous peoples aren't just another group of Canadians.

But the problem is if they're not just another group of Canadians, what are they? Bear in mind that rural Canadians economic existence is predicated on the fact that towns and villages grew up to serve the needs of farmers/lumbermen/fishermen/miners around them. The economic incentive to go there came first, in other words, and sustains those areas. There was never any economic justification for the location of native reservations, and there still isn't. Take all the natives out of a rural reserve and transfer in a bunch of white bread Canadians and the place would be a slum within a generation. There simply is no way to live a modern life there. Living off government handouts turns people into welfare lifers who, as I said, have nothing to do but drink fight and fornicate. The reserves were established at a time when everyone figured all the natives needed was a spot of forest to pitch their teepees. Well, natives don't want to live in teepees and freeze their balls off in the dark. They want electricity, clean running water, health care, modern education, and all the other benefits of modern life. But they can't produce anywhere near enough to support that living out in their uneconomical reserves. Nor can we afford to drastically increase their funding, especially since their numbers continue to grow.
"When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals won't do." David Frum
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