Mordecai Richler Quotes
The truth is that we want nothing so much as to be American. I for one would rather that we chucked it all and joined the United States and stop defying the law of politics and geography…. The reality is that Canadians are Americans already without many of the advantages.
Mordecai Richler, 1931-2001, Canadian Writer, Satirist, & Essayist, “Apathy, Envy And The Great Canadian Wasteland” CBC Closeup, November 5, 1961
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The concern over Hispanic immigrants were at a high point and Latinos in America staged a national demonstrations and in many cases sang the National Anthem in Spanish. When she was told immediately after she expressed her view that her husband had said that our National Anthem was to be sung only in English, she then agreed that it should be sung in English. This quotation is used by some to illustrate that the First Lady had much more compassionate and tolerant views than her husband.
McGee was one of the first visionaries of a pluralistic Canada. his advocacy of multi-ethnic unity and multiculturalism which brought him assassination at his home in Ottawa by a fellow Irishman.
The phrase “Loyalty to the government is our national creed” was advocated by almost all politicians after the Civil War. There were a few communists of the left and libertarians on the right who would disagree but every president tool this position until the administration of Ronald Reagan who then many politicians claimed that the government was a problem and even an enemy of the people. Loyalty was in their view, not to be given to the Government, but to the ideas and ideals of America (as they saw them.) Since then many politicians would talk of “loyalty to America” but not use the McKinley phrase “loyalty to the government.”
At the time sectionalism was extensive in America. Most Iowa and Northern families still remembered a relative who had been “killed by the rebels” in the Civil War. The South still resented the rest of the country. The East and Midwest had much better educated than the rest of the country. Most important, there was very little contact between Americans of different sections. Until the great Eisenhower initiative of a National Highway System sectionalism was common. Presidents were constantly trying to develop a national American spirit.
At the time he was probably sincere as the whites—especially the farmers—had a great deal of know-how and provided a backbone for the economy. However, as he lost popularity, in order to hang on to power, he established a dictatorship and 20 years later pitted the Blacks against the whites destroying the economy and the country in the process. See related quote.
Mordecai Richler was a Canadian writer. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Barney's Version (1997). His 1970 novel St. Urbain's Horseman and 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He is also well known for the Jacob Two-Two children's fantasy series. In addition to his fiction, Richler wrote numerous essays about the Jewish community in Canada, and about Canadian and Quebec nationalism. Richler's Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! (1992), a collection of essays about nationalism and anti-Semitism, generated considerable controversy.
