Talk:National question

Untitled
The National Question (and note the article does need to have 'The' at the start) is a general term used for questions relating to nationalities, nationalism, and nations. Often it is used prefixed with a specific case, such as The Algerian National Question, which most often relate to colonies or semi-colonies (formally independent but with large sections of the economy or land owned by former colonist). This article seems to be on the The Quebec National Question rather than on The National Question as a whole.

- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.67.163.122 (talk) 15:21, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Does "the national question" only relate to Quebec and Canada? Do no other nations have questions? Perhaps this should be a generic article, or a disambiguation to Quebec and a general definition. The exact reason I ended up here is becuase in an article about America this phrase was used, and I'm pretty sure it was not referring to Canada.

NeonElf (talk) 15:35, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

It is used in other countries too. In the UK, I've seen it discussed in relation to Wales and I would guess it's almost certainly asked in relation to Scotland. So no, it does not only relate to Quebec and Canada

HoboBen (talk) 20:57, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

In fact, it was raised by Rosa Luxemburg in 1909 in relation to Poland. 

HoboBen (talk) 21:04, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

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I have made a few changes: I'm not sure that my revised introduction quite captures the issue here, and would welcome improvements, but deleting reference to Canada is surely not an improvement for the reasons identified above. The last thing I want to do here is to get into a revert war over POV. This article should aim to be as NPOV as it can about this contentious issue. Kevintoronto 14:20, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * The introductory paragraph made no mention of Canada. While it may reflect the view of sovereigntists that the National Question can be discussed without reference to Canada, that is only one point of view. It is reasonable to say that, given that Quebec is currently a part of Canada, any discussion of the National Question must make reference to Canada, especially since some of the sovereigntist options relate to some form of union/association with Canada, and the federalist options all relate to Canada.
 * I have removed the reference to the Quebec State from the introduction since that is a sovereigntist concept/argument, as opposed to an actual institution. I have added it to the "See also" list.
 * I removed the link to economic union since it didn't go anywhere, and added one to Sovereignty-association since that was, at least, a concrete proposal for economic union between Quebec and the rest of Canada.
 * I removed "Trudeauist" from the description of "status quo" because (a) it is not a word - the word would be "Trudeauvian", I think, but even that would have little meaning to most readers, and so it is not very useful, and (b) there have been changes, even if they are subtle, to Quebec's position within confederation in the last 21 years.


 * While the dichotomist approach is a valid one in regard the the national question, perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as a sort of "spectrum". What I mean is that you could better split people in these groups with a lot of fluidity around the edges:

- At both ends you have the "pur et dur", those that support complete independence on the sovereignist side and lack of any special status or deal on the federalist side.

- going toward the middle you have those looking for "arrangements", sovereignty-association on the sovereignist side, renewed federalism on the federalist side

- Finally at the center you have the so-called "soft vote", these are those who would usualy consider themselves quebecois first but whose exact opinion might change depending on various circumstances.

The reason why I feel this better reflect the question is that it help explain the position of some groups such as the Action Democratique du Quebec which was on the YES side during the 1995 referendum but as since pronounced itself for a moratorium on future one.--Marc pasquin 02:08, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It's extremely POV to say there are only two "answers" to the national question. -Montréalais 04:25, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Status of this article
Chatted on this with User:Pharos via talk pages for a bit. It seems that, according to the sources, the only idea of a unified "national question" is from Marxism and the National Question. As such, this article should simply be merged with that article. Additionally, it's grossly misleading to call the list "Particular cases of this issue around the world" - many of these long pre-date Stalin's article. They're just entirely different controversies whose only distinction happens to be they include "question" in the title - I don't think Jewish question has really anything to do with Roman question.

As such, I'd prefer that this article be replaced with a strange disambiguation page - just have the "particular cases" list be referred to, and have a hatnote to Marxism and the National Question. No article, just a list. Any objections? SnowFire (talk) 23:40, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Eastern Question which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 18:33, 4 May 2022 (UTC)