National Security Policy: Western Alienation

Regional Affiliation Dept: For every isolationist malcontent in the region, one wonders if there is an equal constituency that holds a more collectivist and universal view of the world and their place within it. Modern-day cosmopolitans, as described by Martha Nussbaum in her 1994 essay Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism , are those people who reject self-definition based on morally irrelevant characteristics such as nationhood or regional affiliation and hold out allegiance for morally good characteristics such as universal justice, reason and mutual respect. Nussbaum s premise is that the me/my region first ideology is not a sustainable foundation on which to build a society and that hyper-patriotism has the potential to turn subversive, as some would say occurred in American national security policy following the events of Sept. 11, 2001. In this essay, we use Nussbaum s interpretations and those of her philosophical contemporaries as a guide to probe Calgary s social, political, and media institutions and to understand the extent to which the popular stereotype of Calgary as a predominantly isolationist culture continues to hold true, according to The Star. A Culture in Context A 45-minute drive south of Calgary on Highway 2 brings you to the edge of the Rocky Mountain foothills and the beginning of prime Alberta ranch country. On the side of the road, on the edge of a vast stretch of land, sits a well-maintained sign that proclaims in bold letters, Less Ottawa, More Alberta. In a province where spare language is commonly employed to support people s passions Support Our Troops, I Heart Alberta Beef , this slogan rings with a particularly brazen isolationist undertone. Most native Westerners can recognize the proclamation as yet another manifestation of decades-old western alienation born out of grudges over lost national contracts and oil revenues. The more self-conscious Albertan might wonder what, if any measure of comity, is expected to be elicited by the sign from newcomers or visitors passing by on their way to the next milepost of good fortune that dots a landscape so rich in blessings as to be convincingly branded God s Country. As Kwame Anthony Appiah describes in Examined Life: Excursions with Contemporary Thinkers , cosmopolitanism is invoked not to denigrate parochial societies but to find a sustainable way forward. We have to figure out how to live in a world in which our responsibilities are, not to just a hundred people with whom we can interact with sic and see, but to six or seven billion people whom we cannot see and whom we can affect only in indirect ways. With so many eyes on Calgary for its significant influence on globally shared domains like the economy and the environment, this psychic and physical place is a worthy one in which to pull over, unpack our tools and explore the competing forces of isolationism and cosmopolitanism in a real-world context. As reported in the news.
@t rocky mountain foothills, martha nussbaum