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Post by hibernicus on Mar 18, 2015 20:47:56 GMT
I've heard of Catholics voting DUP in recent years, but this is the first time I've heard of the DUP making a direct attempt to appeal to Catholic voters on these issues. (Robinson did say a year or two ago at their annual conference that they needed to attract Catholic voters in order to preserve the Union, but that might have been a cosmetic gesture aimed at making them more palatable to moderate Protestants.) This is definitely a change from Paisley's time - Paisley's whole identity was based on "Come ye out from them and be separate" and even when he was on the same side of an issue with Catholics (e.g. on "Save Ulster from Sodomy" in the 1970s and early 80s) he wouldn't share platforms for this reason. (Of course he ended up doing a Chuckle Brothers act with Martin McGuinness, but he wasn't expecting McGuinness to vote for him, just to make him king of the Unionists and First Minister.)
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Post by pugio on Mar 23, 2015 14:14:39 GMT
Surely all Catholics are morally obliged to vote for the DUP, at least according to the Church's own prevailing teaching on the matter?
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 23, 2015 23:25:13 GMT
I don't think it's that simple. Some DUP representatives are very secular (Sammy Wilson is an obvious example who comes to mind) and there are individuals in other parties who one might legitimately vote for. There might also be a prudential judgement that the DUP contains numerous opportunists who can't be relied on and bigots who are beyond the pale. Note that both here and in the North we vote for individual candidates, not party lists. There would be a stronger case for saying Catholics should not vote for SF, given that they have gone beyond just having an obnoxious party policy to using a veto to block pro-life legislation and using the party whip to enforce it - but I fear that most Sinn Fein supporters would not be moved if the Archangel Michael came down from Heaven and delivered that message from the roof of the Royal Victoria Hospital on the Falls Road.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 24, 2015 8:48:22 GMT
I agree with Hibernicus. The problem with the DUP is the same as the problem of any other centre right party on the island - they can't be relied on. Those who would be most sincere on abortion and other moral issues would as sincerely believe Rome to be the scarlet woman in the Apocalypse. The party has plenty of opportunists in it who would happily go on another line, if necessary. And one would ask how committed they would be on the issue of Catholic education, especially with the continued existence of St Mary's University College under threat. By and large, the SDLP still represents a better bet, but again, this is very much a case by case basis.
Sinn Féin are just obnoxious good and simple. They will take votes from areas north and south on the basis of protest, where there would be no great affinity for their current philosophy. And the future leadership, whatever direction it comes from, is going to be worse than Adams/McGuinness, both of whom still identify themselves as Catholics (I suspect Peadar Tóibin does too, as do some more. But we can see the party for what it is. Indeed one wonders how a party can on one hand assert nationalism, but on the other wish to embrace a set of policies very dear to a certain section of the British Labour party. We can thank God they are truculent on the issue of extending the 1967 Act to the North on principle).
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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 24, 2015 9:15:09 GMT
Liberal nationalism has always seemed like a contradiction in terms to me. I don't understand how nationalism doesn't require a certain cultural and social protectionism.
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Post by pugio on Mar 24, 2015 12:51:24 GMT
Apologies for my sarcasm earlier. My point was that making abortion the overriding issue in elections can potentially put voters in very bizarre situations.
I would never consider voting for the DUP. I could pretend this is because of their anti-Catholicism (in the religious sense), but that would be rather sanctimonious of me. In truth, I would be motivated largely by ethnic self-interest. Moreover, I cannot really find it within me to be ashamed of this.
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Post by pugio on Mar 24, 2015 12:57:57 GMT
Liberal nationalism has always seemed like a contradiction in terms to me. I don't understand how nationalism doesn't require a certain cultural and social protectionism. I know where you are coming from and instinctively I agree with you. But this is probably because we have a very similar notion of nationalism informed by our Irish experience. I think it really depends on the context in which nationalism emerges. Many early German and Italian nationalists might be described as liberals. Obviously, though, both those countries eventually took nationalism in a very different direction indeed!
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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 24, 2015 14:09:32 GMT
Well, in the Irish experience, I think there were two strands of nationalism-- Daniel O'Connell type nationalism and United Ireland type nationalism. I think these came together in 1916, and around that whole time, and the tensions between them were not apparent. They only really became apparent when the reality of Irish independence had existed for a few decades.
In general, I think liberal nationalism exists because the liberal nationalist assumes that future generations of their compatriots will want to preserve their national heritage in much the same form. But this is rarely the case, in my view.
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Post by Young Ireland on Mar 24, 2015 18:39:07 GMT
I didn't think that Pugio was being sarcastic at all when he suggested that all Catholics should vote DUP. In fact, I would have some support for this, with the caveats that Hibernicus adds. I think that abortion up North is more likely to be legal in a United Ireland than under the Union (because at least the latter at least won't dare legalise abortion without Stormont's consent, whereas the Irish Government will probably be less sympathetic). I think Precious Life recognise this (though I am open to correction) by advising their members to vote DUP. Whatever one thinks about the DUP, PL are to be commended IMHO for not letting national loyalty cloud their judgement.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 24, 2015 21:42:32 GMT
To step back to liberal nationalism, I just came across this quotation from Orwell, who I usually respect, and wonder how anyone could write such nonsense (and whether he believed it himself):
"Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same. It is the bridge between the future and the past. No real revolutionary has ever been an internationalist."
From the Lion and the Unicorn.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 25, 2015 10:46:40 GMT
To step back to liberal nationalism, I just came across this quotation from Orwell, who I usually respect, and wonder how anyone could write such nonsense (and whether he believed it himself): "Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same. It is the bridge between the future and the past. No real revolutionary has ever been an internationalist." From the Lion and the Unicorn. In this case, I think Orwell has a point - his main flaw here is to assume conservatism is about keeping something from changing. Conservatism and patriotism are not opposites and they are compatible, but they are not co-terminal. I do believe that no real revolutionary has ever been internationalist. But there seems to be an unusual element of Chestertonian paradox in Orwell there.
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Post by pugio on Mar 25, 2015 13:11:06 GMT
I didn't think that Pugio was being sarcastic at all when he suggested that all Catholics should vote DUP. In fact, I would have some support for this, with the caveats that Hibernicus adds. I think that abortion up North is more likely to be legal in a United Ireland than under the Union (because at least the latter at least won't dare legalise abortion without Stormont's consent, whereas the Irish Government will probably be less sympathetic). I think Precious Life recognise this (though I am open to correction) by advising their members to vote DUP. Whatever one thinks about the DUP, PL are to be commended IMHO for not letting national loyalty cloud their judgement. PL are to be commended for the independence of mind it takes to insist that any issue at all is more important than Ireland's national squabble. I am less convinced - though open to persuasion - that those who disagree are necessarily clouded in judgment. It might be helpful to take the heat out of this question by abstracting it from Irish circumstances. Forget the specific issue of abortion and the specific question of Irish unity/independence vs. partition/British rule. A Christian is called to put fidelity to Christ's Church before self-interest. But what about the interest of a larger group, e.g. his family, his race, his community, his civilisation etc.? If a future Catholic were faced with a choice between supporting a Europe governed by indigenous Europeans, libertine and materialist, with an aggressive secular agenda, and a Europe that surrenders finally to Islam, must he choose the latter? Or imagine a warrior in a brutal pagan nation of the past(let us imagine one that practices human sacrifice) that is resisting conquest and subjugation by Charlemagne. Is he, upon baptism, obliged to defect and assist in the destruction of his own people? Admittedly, a plain reading of the gospel might suggest the answer is a severe 'yes'. We must live as lilies in the field, leave the dead to bury their own, and recognise the enemies in our own household, hating our own mothers and fathers for Christ's sake. But I think the Church ('actually existing Christianity' as a marxist might call it!) has been somewhat more forgiving of worldly loyalties.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 25, 2015 22:55:43 GMT
I lived in Northern Ireland for a time and I used to alternate between UUP and SDLP, depending on individual candidates and situations. The reason I habitually express caution on this is because native Northern Catholics have some very sore memories and it is best not to be blase in advising them how to vote. In the same way in a much more extreme case I have doubts about whether the replacement of an elected Islamist government by a military dictatorship is necessarily a good thing, but I am not going to denounce Middle Eastern Christians for supporting such a replacement. It would be quite possible to have an Islamic Europe run by indigenous Europeans (Islam has historically spread by conversion as well as conquest - e.g. the conversion of many North American blacks in the C20), so it might be best to clarify that point. I can think of circumstances where an Islamic Europe might be the lesser of two evils, just as the Soviet Union was the lesser of two evils in the Second World War, but the prospect of such a choice is every bit as appalling as the choice before an Eastern European in 1939-45. What does strike me is that there is a point beyond which worldly loyalties can't morally go. "Pro-Western Christianity", abandoning the Great Commission and trying to turn the Faith into an European tribal religion, is simply beyond the pale, for example. BTW, apparently in Michel Houellebecq's new novel SUBMISSION the "Grand Inquisitor" character is actually a former "tribal Catholic" of this sort who started out on the extreme right promoting traditionalist Catholicism without actually believing it a la Maurras, but comes to realise that pious Muslims hate many of the features of modernity which he himself hates and decides that he has more chance of achieving a society congenial to him by throwing in his lot with them. This sounds worryingly plausible sometimes (e.g. the way in which neo-gnostic so-called Traditionalist types are often attracted to Sufi Islam a la Rene Guenon).
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Post by pugio on Mar 26, 2015 11:11:45 GMT
All excellent points, Hibernicus, and none that I could disagree with (although I think Rene Guenon seems to be rather misused for political purposes that he may not have intended). Parenthetically, I accept of course that an Islamic Europe could be run by indigenous Europeans, even if the scale of Muslim immigration gives the question an ethnic subtext in practice. I was just trying to imagine a dilemma between loyalty to one's nation and loyalty to one's spiritual principles. It was only an example.
It is true that "pro-Western Christianity" would not really be Christianity at all, however emotionally potent it might be for some Westerners. But taking a universalist position for granted, how far must collective (rather than individual) interests be subordinated to gospel injunctions in order to avoid sin?
Clearly worldly loyalties have moral limits. My point is that these demarcations can be pretty shadowy. It may be true to say 'That would be a prudential matter' whenever these questions arise, but sometimes this sounds a little glib to me. What intrigues me here is that these dilemmas seem to point to a tension at the heart of Christianity - a tension that is the source of much of its genius but a tension nonetheless - between Christ's radical affirmation of human beings and his apparent rejection of everything they seem to think is terribly important. This plays out as Christian societies struggle to live up to the apocalyptic example of Christ and come to realise that it is near impossible. So they begin to inculturate and compromise, all in earnest. I think this is why Christians will always be accused of hypocrisy in a way that Muslims, perhaps, will not.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 26, 2015 18:32:57 GMT
Oh, Muslims get accused of hypocrisy as well. Quite a bit of adaptation was necessary to adjust a relatively egalitarian faith devised for desert tribesmen to the running of large and complex societies, and there is a wide variety of localised "folk Islam" around the world and of personalised mysticism (much of which expresses itself in terms which many Muslims find offensive); one of the driving forces of current events is an attempt (to a large extent driven by the Saudis, but not exclusively so) to redefine these variants of Islam as non-Islamic and idolatrous and strip away cultural accretions in order to get back to the "pure" Islam of the era of Mohammed and the first caliphs. "Hypocrite" and "idolater" are tow key terms in inter-Mulim arguments, and Wahhabism/Salafism is in some ways the Islamic equivalent of the Reformation. (Indeed, there was a time when some English Protestants used to praise Islam as a form of Protestantism, more Christian than Eastern Orthodoxy or Popery - a couple of centuries ago when it was at a nice safe distance from them.)
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