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Post by hibernicus on Oct 20, 2011 22:46:48 GMT
Quite a lot of Irish people served in the French Army in the nineteenth century (the Fenian John Devoy joined the Foreign Legion to gain military experience). It wasn't a question of Irish sympathy for French monarchism/republicanism - more that there were strong cultural ties between France and Ireland and France was a major Great Power rival to Britain. I think Shane's central point is accurate - there is little or nothing in the way of a coherent monarchist tradition in Ireland unless you count continuing Unionist support for the British monarchy. I might add BTW that Irish republicanism was historically associated with a view that republicanism was desirable because it was egalitarian, whereas monarchy is associated with a formalized social hierarchy. The IRA in post-independence Ireland did, it is true, engage in intimidation against such activities as the showing of newsreels of British royal events, holding parties to celebrate royal weddings etc. That doesn't mean that the people who wanted to see the newsreels or join the parties would all have voted to keep the Windsors, still less that they would have favoured an Irish monarchy recruited from Heaven knows where. Can we please get back to the matter in hand, which is the current Presidential election?
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 21, 2011 21:03:06 GMT
Several rather heated posts concerning monarchism on this thread have been deleted at the author's request (as a guest he couldn't delete them himself). Another participant in the same exchange has deleted his own posts. I did not ask either of them to do this - they did it of their own free will.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 27, 2011 14:01:00 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 1, 2011 21:43:59 GMT
Any thoughts on the results? As someone who voted for Dana myself and gave a small sum to her campaign, I fear the low votes received by her and by Gay Mitchell will be used to reinforce the view that "conservative Catholicism/ Christian democracy" is old hat and loses votes. Someone has been arguing this case by starting a thread on Politics.ie about "the rejection of conservative Catholic Ireland" - worth looking at as a wide variety of opinions are expressed. www.politics.ie/forum/irish-presidential-election-2011/174639-rejection-conservative-catholic-ireland.html
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Post by humphrey on Nov 1, 2011 22:14:48 GMT
When push came to shove I gave my first preference to Dana, my second to Gay Mitchell, third to Mary Davis, fourth to Sean Gallagher fifth to Martin McGuinness, sixth to Micheal D and seventh to David Norris. I based my vote on blog post by the pro-life campaign which I cannot find at the moment. It mentioned that some Sinn Fein politicians have expressed pro-life sentiments which is why I judged Mr McGuinness better than Norris and Higgins. It has been commented that the presidential elections are referendums on what we want Ireland to be. But I have doubts. I don't believe that the election of Michael D represents an endorsement of his politics. The same people that voted for Fine Gael earlier in the year voted for a strong critic of neoliberalism later in the same year. They have not changed their opinions but rather have judged that Michael D has the qualities of being 'presidential'. Micheal D is actually a very traditional president. A grand old man of politics who retires to the park. The era of the Mary's is well and truly over. I voted no in both referendums which put me in strange position of being on the same side as every human rights-o-crat in the country. Our esteemed politicians engaged in populist lying over summer so I have little trust in them.
There is a children rights referendum on way. Maybe a thread should be set up. I sure there will be plenty to discuss.
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Post by humphrey on Nov 1, 2011 22:47:20 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 2, 2011 22:54:15 GMT
Indeed, Senator Bacik will not let a little thing like gendercide get in the way of the Sacrament of Abortion, though she is always on the lookout for discrimination against women. Talk about straining at gnats and swallowing camels!
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 20, 2011 14:19:49 GMT
Mick Wallace, Independent TD for Wexford, declared in the Dail on November 8 that abortion was a human right which ought to be made available to Irish women on the same basis as other European countries. If Mr Wallace escapes being unseated as bankrupt, Wexford voters should remember this at the next election. www.familyandlife.org/Abortion-and-Embryo/2529/8/26.htmlEXTRACT Independent TD (member of parliament) Mick Wallace (Wexford), made headlines a few years ago when he displayed a huge banner on a building site in the centre of Dublin, proclaiming, “We Have the Blood of Iraqi Children on Our Hands”. His concern for children has now been shown up as hypocrisy. Last week (November 8), in the Dáil, he called for abortion to be legalised in Ireland. Mr Wallace asked Minister for Health, Dr James Reilly to “explain the reasons behind the refusal to accept six recommendations from European countries that Ireland should legislate for abortion”, and to make a statement on the issue. The minister reiterated the government’s intention to establish and expert group to consider the implications of last year’s ABC v. Ireland case. He also pointed out that two of the six recommendations (from Denmark and Slovenia) were outside the scope of that judgement and were not in line with Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution of Ireland. Slovenia wanted Ireland to allow abortion on health grounds and Denmark wanted it permitted in cases of rape or incest. Following the Minister’s response, Mr Wallace launched into a speech urging the legalisation of abortion. “Almost 20 years have passed,” he said, “since the X case and we have watched Government after Government kick the can down the road and refuse to have the courage to deal with this issue.” He described the absence of abortion in Ireland as “a human rights problem which we have been content to export rather than deal with it head on, as we are afraid of what the public might think.” Ignoring the fact that Ireland is the safest country in Europe in which to give birth, Mr Wallace claimed that “44 of the 47 countries in Europe are way ahead of us on this issue in respecting the right to health of the pregnant woman.” “Irish abortion law denies women the most fundamental right to live in dignity and to self-determination and the opportunity to exercise these rights without discrimination in that having an abortion is criminalised in almost all circumstances.” ... END OF EXTRACT When Wexford elected a person with such views (which I understand he kept to himself during the election) the gold sun of Freedom was indeed darkened at Ross and truly set 'neath the Slaney's red waves.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 20, 2011 14:51:25 GMT
A conservative blogger called Bovis notes (in relation to the post about La Bacik's refusal to support Ronan Mullen's motion condemning gendercide abortion) that Bacik is not the only one - Fine Gael actually whipped its Senators to vote against the motion. It could have treated it as an issue of conscience and had a free vote, but no - it ordered them to support the viscerating amendment under threat of expulsion from the party if they disagreed. (Inda was not the first in this - Garret the Great Pluralist imposed the whip on such issues, on the "Pluralism for me but not for thee" basis - Liam Cosgrave famously took a different view and is still derided by the self-professed pluralists for possessing a conscience.) H/t to Thirsty Gargoyle for the link. bovis.blog.com/2011/11/02/the-boneless-wonder-or-fine-gael-and-the-moral-maze/EXTRACT Some years ago I was able to observe the machinations of Fine Gael in election mode. There was a huge amount of chat about policy, radical cutting edge, game changing, and paradigm shifting policy. Politics was now a battle of ideas I heard, and the job of the party was to innovate and communicate. Well you get the idea. An orgy of cliché was had by all. However when on a few occasions Mad Blueshirt did approach the mother ship moored on Mount St. with fresh notions they went into fits. Not the traditional Fine Gael cataleptics but full blown apoplexy. Raging frothing phone calls and desperate terrified emails besieged us until reassurance was given. On only two topics were we to be given our full rhetorical head. The Dear Leader himself had spoken with absolute clarity. Fine Gael was committed to faith schools both on principle and in the belief that the model was highly successful for children. And secondly Fine Gael held the Prolife position as a core value. Well faith schools have long since been thrown to the dogs of political opportunism. If this govt lasts five years and Quinn stays as peoples commissar for public instruction then we can be confident God will have been hunted from our classrooms and the religious from our schools. But last week saw something which I still find hard to credit. As tired and cynical as a person becomes there lingers a hope that our politicos have somewhere in them a sticking point. But then… Last Thursday Ronan Mullen, jihadist, proposed to the Senate that the practice of killing girls in utero because they were girls was a bad practice. ……………. I was going to go on long sarcastic satirical polemic, against our feminists and others, in the manner of a modest proposal. But I can’t. I’m too tired. I’m too sad. I’m too disheartened right now. The publically confessed catholic leader of Fine Gael, Ireland’s Christian Democratic Party whipped his senators on an indisputable matter of conscience. He whipped them to support an amendment which eviscerated the motion. An amendment put down by Irelands leading pro abortion advocate. A cowardly amendment which came out against infanticide; a practice which is already illegal everywhere. A vicious amendment; which was careful not to mention the abortion, of girls or any other vulnerable group. I am heart sick. I am hurt for my friends in FG who are bewildered by the lack of morality or courage shown by the leadership of the largest ever FG group in the Oireachteas. I am ashamed for those young men and women who I know and like in the parliamentary party. Men and women I never dreamt would remain passive and quiescent in the face of such an immoral use of the whip. I am at a loss to know where or to whom I can turn to find support or defence of the principles, ethics and traditions of many if not most Irish people. Is Enda Kenny really telling me already that if I want than kind of thing I must go back to the party which did so much to ruin the country? Maybe. Maybe a decimated, humiliated and purged FF represents the best hope of old idiots like me. On the face of it that proposition seems absurd. You might very reasonably ask me how I could think of forgiving them so soon. You might correctly say that they must spend many more years in the desert before they might even be considered for power. I have no satisfactory answer to you. Perhaps the young TDs and Senators in whom I had previously reposed my hope will yet find their courage and their voice. Perhaps. On this the first day of repayments the Taoiseach doesn’t know the names of the bondholders. Yet I do. The Internet told me. What I don’t know is what Fine Gael is for. I wonder does the Taoiseach know. END
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 20, 2011 17:09:29 GMT
Bovis makes it clear elsewhere on his blog that he is "not religious" and not a practicing Catholic, but he is concerned that our present wave of official secularists are imposing state absolutism a la francaise which denies people the freedom to establish religious institutions/associations if that is what they want: bovis.blog.com/2011/08/27/pity-is-treason-maximilien-robespierre/EXTRACT Secularism is actively hostile to religious belief and practice. That is why though not religious I could not be a secularist. It is a philospohy of exclusion, intolerance and it is aggressively opposed to the rights of the individual . It may be morally permissible for a person to be a secularist, but a state which is avowedly secular must perforce do violence to the rights of its citizens. I don’t want a Christian version of sharia law. I would end up stoned fairly quickly. But the more I read this article and reflected on it the clearer it became how horrible an alternative a secular Ireland could be. Me I am as old fashioned as a free market Liberal in sixties Britain. I like pluralism. Everybody in the market place, ideas and values competing and complimenting each other. Respectful disagreement is the order of the day and no one is going to make me sacrifice at the Altar of Reason or in the temple of Revolutionary Justice. Our state is one based on Pluralism and Christianity. It doesn’t have to be so, we can change the constitution. But until it is changed please do not be under any misapprehensions. This is not a secular state; we are not a secular people. If you don’t want to go the Church, do what I do, sleep in. If you don’t want your children to have a religious education send them to Educate together. Or Blackrock. If you don’t want a church wedding, don’t have one. Freedom does not lie in every one having their liberty reduced by the same amount. It is not in taking away the cribs and silencing the bells. It is in the joyful permission to let the bells ring, let the monks chant, let some feast and let others fast. What doesn’t hurt me is not my concern. If the angelus hurts me, then I need more concerns. END
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 13, 2012 20:17:12 GMT
The IRISH TIMES today has an interesting piece from a Dana supporter in relation to claims that RTE deliberately stacked the decisive debate against Sean Gallagher. He states that he and his friends were put to one side along with the Fine Gael supporters, and the debate moderator only called on questioners from the central section while ignoring those in the side aisles. He also notes that some of the questions seemed suspiciously detailed given that those asking them seemed very young... The New Establishment at work. Expect a repeat performance whenever there is an abortion debate.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Mar 14, 2012 14:07:04 GMT
Saw the letter - and there is a surprised reply to it today - God bless the writer's innocence.
But why are we surprised. If I remember correctly, the first series of Questions & Answers in the 1980s was chaired by Olivia O'Leary, who was removed and replaced by John Bowman because of the questions being asked by Shinners in the audience (not really Olivia's fault - she's not a closet Provo whatever else she is). Since then audience questions have been heavily vetted (censored?) Getting a guy to rehearse a question or three is just one step up. And we have all seen plants in audiences - going back to the Gay Byrne Late Late Show.
So, what do we expect? It's still instructive to see a guy like Brian Flanagan, who has no dog in this fight, say honestly what happened.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 16, 2012 19:29:53 GMT
The point is that RTE always present themselves as impartial even though they are anything but (they are not lying - they just assume that reality and their worldview are the same thing, and that anyone who disagrees with them must therefore be hypocritical or delusional. A nice view of this is the tone in which Lara Marlowe and Co in the IRISH TIMES report the US Presidential election). It's important to document this, and to point out the unstated and unquestioned assumptions that lurk behind what they presume to be self-evident truths. That's what Socrates was all about.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 18, 2012 19:28:35 GMT
A good example of my point in the last post is the title of John Bowman's recent official history of RTE - WINDOW AND MIRROR. The point of the title is to suggest that RTE has historically given Irish society access to the wider world - hence the "window" and shown us aspects of ourselves and our society, some of which we might not have been aware or preferred not to admit existed - the "mirror". But the central implication of the mirror/window metaphor is that RTE itself has been a neutral medium which simply exposed what was already there. The possibility that it might have been a stained-glass window or distorting mirror - that it might have accentuated some aspects of Ireland and the world while concealing others, that the people running it might have had agendas of their own which they promoted at the expense of other viewpoints - is implicitly dismissed. The SINDO today reports claims that a questioner who had announced (in another forum some days earlier) his intention of voting for Higgins was allowed to ask Norris an awkward question without revealing his own allegiance, and that a recently appointed FRONTLINE producer broadcast tweets sympathetic to Higgins, critical of Gallagher supporters, and dismissing complaints about RTE's use of the fake tweet to derail Gallagher. It seems RTE official guidelines state staff are not meant to declare their sympathies publicly in this manner. www.independent.ie/national-news/labours-link-in-new-frontline-bias-row-3053879.htmlwww.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/jody-corcoran-labour-connection-casts-shadow-over-rtes-frontline-debate-3053791.html
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