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Post by shane on Nov 21, 2010 2:33:49 GMT
The new National Alliance is not exactly my cup of tea (to put it mildly) but David Quinn is a board member, so I thought it may be of interest. www.nationalalliance.ie
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 21, 2010 17:32:37 GMT
Can you tell us more about it?
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Post by shane on Dec 2, 2010 14:33:50 GMT
Unfortunately I don't know a lot about it - bar what I've read on its website. The board is composed of ‘economist and broadcaster‘ Marc Coleman, ‘former Campaign Director of Libertas‘ John McGuirk and ‘founder and Director of the Iona Institute‘ David Quinn. The manifesto is like something you'd read in the Spectator or the Washington Post. It's just a clumsy attempt to graft that onto an Irish body politic, except with a 'native' gloss. That I think explains the inclusion of awkward references to the 'failure of partition' and lamenting the death of 'our Gaeltacht heartland'. According to 'EWI', a contributor at the old Fi Fie Foe Fum blog (dedicated to documenting the antics of the now defunct Freedom Institute), Quinn and McGuirk (former Director of the Freedom Institute) are largely motivated and inspired by, and emulate the cultures of, US and English conservatism. A quick glance at McGuirk's blog would seem to confirm this. Quinn wrote an odd article in First Things back in 1995 lamenting that nobody in Ireland felt "obliged to establish a conservative party such as the American Republicans or the British Conservatives". www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9511/opinion/opinion.htmlI think it's significant that Quinn should mention the British Tories and American Republicans, neither of which have any strong Catholic heritage, rather than the Christian Democrat parties of the continent. I suspect he'd be much more at home with Thatcher and Reagan than Schuman, Adenauer and de Gasperri.
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Post by shane on Dec 2, 2010 14:40:00 GMT
They've renamed it National Forum. National Alliance happens to also be the name of an Italian far-right party. nationalforum.ieThe economic policy is terrifying. Check out the proposed Charter of Taxpayers' Rights. For instance: "No person in publicly funded employment should comment on economic policy, this being a conflict of interest." Very scary.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 6, 2010 14:58:50 GMT
The position with the British Tories and American Republicans is not as simple as Assisi suggests. The Conservatives did traditionally have a religious component in their appeal (hence the remark that they were "the Church of England at prayer") though this has increasingly been sidelined as Britain becomes more secular and the churches more leftist. The Republicans likewise have a "religious Right" component including many orthodox Catholics, though there is a good deal of cynicism in the relationship. I don't see it as odd that David Quinn should refer to the Conservatives and Republicans, given that he is writing for an Anglophone audience who are more familiar with these parties than with Continental equivalents. The other point that should be borne in mind is that the Continental Christian Democrats have tended to become less Christian over the decades, and are really secular technocratic parties with a more or less religious tinge. Their original identity drew on a Catholic associational culture which has gone into long-term decline, and as parties of power after the Second World War they attracted various power-seeking interest groups. The implosion of the Italian DC amid corruption scandals in the mid-90s is a prime example of this, although there are several small DC successor parties on both left and right. My big problem with the liberal/neoconservative version of Catholic politics is that it tends to turn Catholicism into an articulate middle-class club and abandon the working classes to secularism - but what can be done about it?
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Dec 16, 2010 12:31:55 GMT
Marc Coleman spent part of his childhood in Erlangen (Bavaria) and worked in the ECB in Frankfurt, and so has a lot of experience of Germany. A pity he doesn't bring experience of the CDU/CSU into the mix.
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