9/17 Political Identity & Political Culture (Part 2)

9/17 Political Identity & Political Culture (Part 2)

"Now that is a model of the sort of foreign practice, founded on foreign problems, at which a man's first impulse is naturally to laugh. Nor have I any intention of apologising for my laughter. A man is perfectly entitled to laugh at a thing because he happens to find it incomprehensible. What he has no right to do is to laugh at it as incomprehensible, and then criticise it as if he comprehended it. The very fact of its unfamiliarity and mystery ought to set him thinking about the deeper causes that make people so different from himself, and that without merely assuming that they must be inferior to himself.”(p.5).

In this passage Chesterton states that it is okay to laugh at something you may find unusual but it’s not okay to laugh at something you don't understand and then criticize it. I believe that in writing this passage Chesterton wants his readers to understand that a man should not conceive the fact that he finds something “incomprehensible” and then act as if he truly does understand by criticizing it. In other words Chesterton is saying that not understanding something should make us think about why we don’t understand instead of writing it off as inferior or wrong. 

9/10 Political Identity & Political Culture

"We have insisted that the immigrant whom we welcomed escaping from the very exclusive nationalism of his European home shall forthwith adopt a nationalism just as exclusive, just as narrow, and even less legitimate because it is founded on no warm traditions of his own. Yet a nation like France is said to permit a formal and legal dual citizenship even at the present time. Though a citizen of hers may pretend to cast off his allegiance in favor of some other sovereignty, he is still subject to her laws when he returns. Once a citizen, always a citizen, no matter how many new-citizenships he may embrace. And such a dual citizenship seems to us sound and right. For it recognizes that, although the Frenchman may accept the formal institutional framework of his new country and indeed become intensely loyal to it, yet his Frenchness he will never lose."

          In my interpretation of this passage Bourne states that it is unrealistic to expect a immigrant to completely cast away is devotion and interest in the country of his birth and exclusively be loyal to his new country. Bourne believes that dual citizenship is a more appropriate process of naturalization because dual citizenship doesn't hide the fact that immigrants have ties to other nations.

          I chose this passage because I agree with Bourne's point. Being a naturalized citizen myself I have first hand experience of the whole naturalization process.I personally find it impossible for me to completely assimilate to my new country and wipe myself clean of the traditions I was born with and to have no interest in my previous home nation. I believe that this passage relates to the course because citizenship is a key requirement in order to participate in any political system.