|
Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on May 22, 2009 13:54:47 GMT
There is a religious duty to vote, however unappetising the alternatives on offer. One point to bear in mind, by the way, is that if Fianna Fail are crushed and there is a Fine Gael-Labour coalition, I think we will proably see a wave of "liberalising" legislation as we did in the early 1990s when Labour were last in government. Fianna Fail though utterly hypocritical do recognise a degree of social conservatism among their supporters (mainly based on inertia, and in older voters) and are prepared to make the odd gesture to appease it (so long as it does not antagonise the better-off secularised middle-class and upper working-class voters who are the real swing element). Hibernicus is correct here. Any committed Catholic will have to think long and hard about kicking FF out, as Labour would be part of any alternative government. FG may be more conservative than they have been since Liam Cosgrave's time, but they can only get into government upon agreeing a programme of government with Labour.
|
|
|
Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on May 22, 2009 14:04:41 GMT
By the way, if I was in Dublin Central I would probably cast a protest vote for the CSP in the knowledge that the wonder of PR would enable me to transfer my vote to a serious candidate. This is a good strategy. I notice no one voted CSP above. I wonder why
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 22, 2009 14:29:34 GMT
I found Hibernicus' analysis of the 'Christian' parties interesting. They never achieved the most meagre electoral success. They seem adverse to seriously working to build local organisations, to get involved in local issues, to gain representation on local authorities. Bigger fish and bigger pond will only follow from that. What they are up to now and what their aims or objectives are is anybody's guess. But if there is a way not to gain representation, they have found it.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on May 22, 2009 16:56:49 GMT
Part of the problem, I think is self-identification as "the plain people of Ireland". If you think the "people" are really on your side, why bother with thinking and similar uncomfortable exercises which require hard work and painful compromises? This mindset was summed up for me by a headline in THE RISIH FAMILY just after the Maastricht referendum. The previous week it had predicted a NO victory in the referendum. How did it respond to the 2-1 Yes victory? It picked up on the fact that several Gaeltacht parishes in Connemara and Kerry had returned NO majorities and declared THE REAL IRELAND VOTED NO! In other words, Darndale and Foxrock, Howth and Finglas are not "real" at all, but a disturbing nightmare from which we shall soon awaken, so no need to be disturbed - dream on...
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on May 22, 2009 18:51:13 GMT
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on May 25, 2009 9:14:31 GMT
I would think that the problem the "Christian" parties have had can be summed up in the word - self-assurance; the assumption that you know it all already and have nothing to learn, adn that everyone who disagrees with you about anything must by definition be evil and acting in bad faith. This is a real recipe for egotism and incompetence.
|
|
|
Post by guillaume on May 26, 2009 10:01:08 GMT
3 votes for Libertas.... Well, I found out that in France, Libertas and the MPF (Mouvement pour la France), are joining forces. Now, the MPF in France is a tiny party whose leader is Philippe de Villiers. It will be - say - situated between conservative right and National Front (extreme right). It is not closed to Le Pen's party at all, ok. BUT some ideas from De Villiers are very closed, regarding immigration for example, and European issues. De Villiers has a strong anti-Islamic politic for France (4 millions of Muslims live in France). He claims to be the only French politician to address this issue (Le Pen's policy is against "immigration" in general and does not address directly the Islamic issue). This is an extract from Wiki : Villiers is a nationalist, a traditionalist, and a leading eurosceptic.[3][16] He has self-described as a "rooted conservative". During his tenure under Francois Leotard, he said that he shared Leotard's American-based "libertarian liberalism".[6][7] In 1995, The Economist referred to him as "an ephemeral Catholic monarchist"[17]
He advocates cutting taxes, expelling all illegal immigrants, and preventing Turkey from joining the EU.[12] He is a vocal critic of the European Union's relationship with France, accusing it of "destroying their jobs, their security and their identity" and saying that "the Europe of Brussels is an anti-democratic dictatorship".[3] He was a leader of the side advocating a 'No' vote in the 2005 French referendum of the European Constitution.[16] The 'No' side won the vote, which the activists believed constituted a major victory for Euroscepticism in France.[16] Villiers then launched a campaign to restore the franc, remarking that "Everybody notes today that the adoption of the euro was a technical success but its economic, political and human toll is incontestable."[16]
Villiers opposes immigration into France in general, but he has advocated that "individual cases be treated with the greatest humanity." He also opposes expelling current immigrants residing in France or subjecting them to discrimination in housing, employment, or other spheres. Despite their differences on these and other issues, the National Front's Jean Marie Le Pen has remarked that Villiers' ideas were "lifted" from him and that their "votes should be added together".[6]
Villiers coined the phrase "Polish Plumber" in a June 2005 political speech about the Bolkestein directive, referring to the perceived threat of cheap East European labour to French wages.[18] The mythical figure became a central point of debate in France, and it later prompted an international controversy.[18] He has also referred to the "Latvian mason" and the "Estonian gardener."[18]
American author Harvey Gerald Simmons has compared the "Villiers phenomenon" to Ross Perot's support in the 1992 American Presidential election. He stated that Villiers has a populist, anti-establishment image that puts him on the edges of the mainstream political right of France rather than in the far right.[6] .
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on May 26, 2009 10:43:45 GMT
This item from the Politics.ie forum may be of interest- apparently Jim Fahey of RTE is claiming that there appears to be a groundswell of support for Ganley, centred on the vote Dana got last time and also involving a shift of some traditional FF/Fg to him on anti-establishment grounds. The comments are arguing over this and there does seem to be some evide3nce for it. www.politics.ie/elections/71701-palpable-groundswell-move-ganley-jim-fahy-rte.html I'd rather see Caroline Simons do well in Dublin but I suspect there's not much chance of that. I would be extremely wary against seeing Ganley as a messiah figure but let's hope for the best...
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 26, 2009 14:39:11 GMT
I hear that FG boy wonder George Lee is been considered to stand in Dún Laoghaire in the next general election to avoid the problem of defending 3 FG seats in a 5-seater. If this is the case, FG is showing profound disrespect for the electorate of Dublin South.
|
|
|
Post by Askel McThurkill on May 26, 2009 15:03:41 GMT
I was expecting this to be a long article and I was pleasantly surprised. The author says a lot in a few short lines. Our friends in the Christian parties simply do not understand politics.
|
|
|
Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on May 27, 2009 10:05:37 GMT
I want to raise a controversial question here: how far is the development of the 'Christian' parties a mask for the extreme right? Emmanuel Sweeney's comments on Mervyn Taylor and Alan Shatter in 1995 were worthy of Joseph Goebbells.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on May 27, 2009 10:43:19 GMT
I think that was certainly the case with Justin Barrett's electoral endeavour in the last Euro elections. He had a fully worked-out anti-democratic philosophy (read his THE NATIONAL WAY FORWARD! if you don't believe me - it calls for the abolition of political parties and the parliamentary system, to be replaced by a plebiscitary dictatorship, declares that the only possible consequence of allowing immigration is that the immigrants exterminate the natives and take over the country a la North America, all our problems stem from the fact that post-independence politicians didn't do everything the bishops told them to and if they had we would now have an ideal Catholic society, etc). Fortunately he was such a paranoid egoist that he didn't make much impact, but I am worried about what he may be up to now. The other "Christian" parties were I think too incoherent to be real far-rightist; they did tend to have a very strong belief in absolute national sovereignty and republican irredentism a la 1950s Fianna Fail or the Sinn Fein of the same period, without ever addressing the question of why this didn't work out first time round. The big problem in this area is the continuing influence of Fr. Denis Fahey. His work has been taken up by anti-semites outside Ireland so it is still in print, the SSPX and similar ultra-traditionalist groups keep his cult alive, and he seems to provide a coherent answer to the question of what went wrong - namely (a) all would have been well if Ireland had declared itself a Catholic state de jure as well as de facto (though this doesn't seem to have worked out too successfully in Spain or Portugal) (b) everything is the fault of the World Jewish Conspiracy. Once the gullible accept the basic premise that the WJC exists, they are sucked in because any evidence that it doesn't exist can be explained away as fabricated by the WJC. Incidentally, if we are discussing how the horrors summed up by the Ryan Report could have come into existence, an article I once saw by Fr. Fahey provides an insight. In this article he declares that it is downright heresy to demand that members of religious orders should have academic qualifications before they are allowed to teach in schools, because their religious vocation automatically supplies them with the grace needed to be successful teachers! In other words, ordination or profession is assumed to transform you into an angel, and it is unthinkable that you might subsequently behave like a devil. The danger I think is not so much that "Christian" parties will be fronts for the far right, as that far-rightists will fish opportunistically in the Catholic traditionalist subculture to try to create a support coalition. I remember coming across literature from a group called International Third Position which basically has a Catholic traditionalist veneer over an esoteric pagan mindset in which only a select racial warrior elite are believed to have souls, and the Tridentine Rite is presented as a magical ritual truly perceived only by the elect. The Nazi discussion board at Irish-nationalism.net (though I suspect many of its inmates are Irish-American rather than Irish) has several posters who describe themselves as Catholic traditionalists; I remember one who hailed the SSPX as the future for the white race because their adherents have such large families. I suspect if an Irish version of Jean-Marie Le Pen ever arises, he will present himself in secular terms but part of his appeal will be to Catholic traditionalists alienated from the hierarchy.
|
|
|
Post by Askel McThurkill on May 27, 2009 14:26:37 GMT
To return to the original point, I don't believe that these elections are quite the open and shut case that the media present. Even this thread indicates there are going to be a few surprises on the day.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on May 27, 2009 17:05:01 GMT
I don't know if the media are presenting it as an open and shut case - unless you mean they are trying to talk down Libertas, which is clearly the case. The big questions are whether FF will melt down and whether the protest parties will break through, and if so which ones. it will also be worth seeing whether Labour makes significant gains, or whether the protest vote goes predominantly to Fine Gael.
|
|
|
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 28, 2009 8:04:00 GMT
It makes me laugh to think that an ultra respectable party like Fine Gael might benefit from a protest vote ;D
|
|