Thomas Friedman wrote a column in The New York Times on November 11 under the title of “Freud and the Middle East.”
It contained this sentence:
“Just as there is a little bit of West Bank ‘Jewish settler’ in almost every Israeli, there is a little bit of the caliphate dream in almost every Sunni.”
Readers are invited to comment on these five statements:
1. There is a French Canadian in every Canadian.
2. There is an English Canadian in every Canadian.
3. There is an American in every Canadian
4. There is an aboriginal in every Canadian.
5. There is a Harper in every Canadian.
Eric Koch’s new book, New Beginnings, was launched on September 20. The book is available from 
Homo sum et humani nihil a me alienum puto.
I’m sure that we all secretly wish that we possessed (with no cliche left unturned):
the joie de vivre of the French Canadian;
the grounded, phlegmatic common sense of the English Canadian;
the entrepreneurial courage of the American;
the reverence for nature of the aboriginal;
ummm…oh, never mind.
In any identifiable group there are some shared values and characteristics to some degree, but many more subtle and nuanced differences. A Canadian is someone who identifies with being Canadian, but the Canadian identity with which they identify may not be the same as any other Canadian who identifies with being Canadian. That’s one of the complex paradoxes of identity.
‘There is a troubled mind in every human being.’