“Vous êtes pas tannés de mourir, bande de caves?”*

When I started blogging at the end of 2010, I swore never to discuss Québec politics in this space, first and foremost because my expertise lies in development policy, but also because my opinions about Québec politics, society, and culture are not shared by many.

I thus thought I would spare myself being called a sellout — not only do I live and work in the US, I also write in English, two things that are often viewed with suspicion in Québec — and keep my political opinions to myself.

Earlier this week, however, Jérôme Lussier wrote a column titled “Doléances pour un Québec dépassé” (“Complaints for an outdated Québec”) in Voir, a Montreal-based independent weekly, and every single thing he wrote deserves to be said, repeated, and broadcast far and wide. Lussier’s column is a deeply humanistic cri du coeur.

Because it’s the holidays, I am in a giving mood. So here is my bit of agitprop for the year: my translation of Lussier’s column. Bear in mind that the following is the intellectual property of Lussier.

1. It is not being ideological to believe that bilingualism constitutes an advantage and to want our children to benefit from it.
2. It is not lacking ambition to hope that one’s daughter will study at Stanford, that one’s son will work in Shanghai, that one’s nephew will be a boxer in Las Vegas, or that one’s niece will be a model in Milan.
3. It is not a perversion to prefer Bon Iver to Paul Piché, Adele to Céline Dion, and the Beastie Boys to Loco Locass, but to also love Jean Leloup, Arcade Fire, Malajube, and Beau Dommage.
4. It is not being politically correct to claim that the great environmental, cultural, and economic questions of our time go well beyond national boundaries.
5. It is not religion to realize that Facebook, Twitter, and the Internet allow discovering and maintain communities that have no use for the national boundaries.
6. It is not cynical to remind ourselves that the universe does not begin at Hull and end at Gaspé, and that the laws and hopes of Québec do not have extra-territorial impacts.
7. It is not treason to concede that Québec only represents 0.1 percent of humankind and that its constitutional status has nothing to do with that fact.
8. It is not naive to say that Québec needs the rest of the world as much as — if not more than — the rest of the world needs Québec.
9. It is not self-hatred to contemplate without any complacency what could make our language and our culture unattractive to immigrants or tourists.
10. It is not uncalled for to suggest that patronage, corruption, mediocre schools, and dysfunctional hospitals hurt Québec more than does McGill University.
11. It is not federalism to be exasperated by those who speak more of the Kitchen Accord than of students dropping out of our schools, of our elders lacking adequate long-term care, and of the suicide rate in Québec.
12. It is not kowtowing to refuse to impose one’s language to someone who rejects it, much like one would refuse to force a someone to love one if one failed to seduce them.
13. It is not living on one’s knees to respect other people’s freedom like one would want them to respect one’s freedoms.
14. It is not navel-gazing to consider that there is, in cultural matters, an intimate sphere that eludes the state, much as there is one in cultural matters.
15. It is not defeatism to plead that, even when defending a language and a culture, the end does not justify the means.
16. It is not being sold out to doubt of the usefulness of a policy of hostility toward English-speaking waitresses as a means of promotion of the French language.
17. It is not being colonized to speak English every once in a while in Montreal, a city that has always been bilingual and cosmopolitan.
18. It is not excessive niceness to tolerate without anger the presence of people whose language, ideas, and culture are different from ours.
19. It is not amnesia to ask for the Québécois of today an identity that is not the same as that of their ancestors.
20. It is not heresy to assume that the new generation recognizes itself more in universal values than in a desire for cultural homogeneity.
21. It is not propaganda to claim that political, cultural, and linguistic control cannot be broadcast the same in 2011 as they were in 1971.
22. It is not being disconnected to feel, like Dany Laferrière, that it is urgent to “get Québec out of Québec.”
23. It is not being complexed to be convinced that Québec is prouder when it competes head on and triumphs than when it isolates itself and claims victory.
24. It is not weak to imagine that we are stronger when we show what we can do than when we prevent others from doing things differently.
25. It is not suicidal to put forth that Québec has more to gain in participating in contemporary spheres of influence than to try in vain to protect it from the rest of the world.

*The title of this post is from a poem by Claude Péloquin (link is in French). It roughly translates as “Aren’t you tired of dying, bunch of morons?” It was written on the mural of the Grand Théâtre de Québec by Catalan artist Jordi Bonet. I chose this title because any culture that is incapable of tolerating dissent (and of being criticized without pointing how things are not so great somewhere else) is already dead.

(HT: Jess Fortin.)