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Post by Askel McThurkill on Jul 13, 2009 14:36:29 GMT
Let's open up with an old question to be addressed in a new way - can a Catholic in good conscience vote for Sinn Féin? Who can a Catholic vote for, aside from the fact civic duty obliges us to vote?
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 14, 2009 13:15:10 GMT
Individual candidates, though the fact that we have such centrally-controlled parties and such limited roles for backbenchers severely limits this approach. It may also be necessary to vote for the less bad against the worst. One of the big failings of the various Catholic/Christian splinter parties and independents has been that they haven't made any concerted effort to direct where their voters should transfer their votes - that might give some leverage ovetr the big parties. Perhaps the discussion on "Can" Catholics vote for Sinn Fein should be "should" catholics vote for Sinn Fein,as we don't have any authority to direct Catholics on how to vote. I say this as someone who would never vote for Sinn Fein in a million years. I have only limited ability to psot this week so my posts will be infrequent.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 24, 2009 12:09:43 GMT
Richard Greene and a Coir activist called Brian O'Connor have launched yet another new party, the Irish People's Party. (Why didn't they just call it Muintir na hEireann like the last one?) It is not the first party to have that name; in the 1920s a party called Clann na hEireann chose "Irish People's Party" as the English version of its name. After it was routed at its first and last general election it was described as "the People's Party without any people". I predict a similar fate for the new arrival. I distrust parties which call themselves "the people's party" as they tend to assume the people support them already and therefore it is unnecessary, any harmful to engage in such hard work as canvassing, policy formation (internal debate is a definite no-no; the leaders ARE the people so anyone who criticises them is by defintion against the people) etc. Here is their website; very scrappy. Their only discernable policies are being pro-life, anti-Lisbon and opposed to the banking bailout as "helping the banks at the expense of the Irish people". Longford is an odd place to launch it (they link to the LONGFORD LEADER report), especially as Greene lives in Dublin. I wonder if the Pixie presence in Athlone is one factor in this - but then, why not have the launch in Athlone? ippparty.webs.com/apps/links/
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Aug 9, 2009 16:58:33 GMT
Longford is very close to Justin Barrett's abode in Moyne, but I am not suggesting there is a connection.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 10, 2009 10:01:47 GMT
Joe Doyle the former FG TD who rebelled against his party on the Pro-Life Amendment and other "social issues" in the 1980s has died. Here is a link to the Politics.ie tribute strand, which includes messages from people who disagreedw ith him on the issues but acknowledged his honesty. Your prayers would be appreciated. www.politics.ie/fine-gael/92345-death-joe-doyle-rip.html
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 11, 2009 10:24:59 GMT
Richard Greene and a Coir activist called Brian O'Connor have launched yet another new party, the Irish People's Party. (Why didn't they just call it Muintir na hEireann like the last one?) Is this the same Richard Greene who was thrown out of: 1. Fianna Fáil 2. The Green Party - Comhaontas Glas 3. The original Muintir na h-Éireann of which he was founder and leader? Is this a good track record?
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 11, 2009 17:26:04 GMT
To be fair, the first two reflecteed serious policy divisions. It's the third that's the worrying one because he ran the party like an autocrat and imposed an unsuitable deputy leader, causing a disastrous split.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 12, 2009 13:41:16 GMT
If I remember correctly, Greene was on the national executive of Fianna Fáil and he broke with the party over extradition in 1988.
He subsequently joined the Greens, but broke with them apparently on abortion (though they have no fixed policy on abortion) in 1992. His main achievement was to take votes from the first Green TD, Roger Garland in the 1992 election after which Garland lost his seat - he may have lost it anyway, but Greene did him no favours. Ironically, Roger Garland was and is very opposed to abortion.
Then came Muintir na hÉireann and the less said about deputy leader Emmanuel Sweeney's outburst during the 1995 Divorce referendum, the better. Greene had clearly lost the confidence of the small party membership long before this and they kicked him out, destroying the party in the process.
That is an interesting looking CV.
On electoral record, he was elected to Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council as a Green in 1991. At the next election in 1999, his ward was divided in two in the boundary revisions. He crazily ran and lost in both new wards instead of concentrating on one and possibly holding the seat. Full marks for political sagacity there.
So, the Irish People's Party looks like it is a threat then....
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 3, 2009 10:43:13 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 3, 2009 14:24:53 GMT
Micheal Martin gave a speech on the Lisbon Treaty recently denouncing Coir as a front for Youth Defence. The interesting thing is that he pretty clearly assumes that his audience will regard YD as a bunch of lunatics and sees no apparent need to justify this. I am inclined to think the involvement of pro-lifers with sovereigntism since the Maastricht referendum in 1992 has been a disaster. It has done nothing to prevent European integration - and by antagoniseing potential sympathisers in the main parties, since these parties simply will not compromise on support for EU membership, it has made legalised abortion more rather than less likely. Sovereigntist pro-lifers' prophecies of doom will IMHO turn out to be self-fulfilling. If these people want to argue for Ireland to leave the EU they should not treat it as an article of faith.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 3, 2009 15:15:28 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 18, 2009 11:28:58 GMT
Link to a Rod Dreher blogpost - the salient quotation is this one, adn it applies to quite a few Irish "political Catholics" and particularly at the moment to the anti-Lisbon campaign. It has become common now for activists to see every minor incident in maximalist terms, and to state it in those terms for the sake of ginning up their base. This debases politics, and it debases public discourse. blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/09/what-is-socialism-in-2009.htmlAnyone who wonders why this is a bad idea should consider Aesop's fable about the boy who cried "Wolf" for a joke, and di d it so often that when a wolf did attack his flock and he cried for help no-one believed him.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 12, 2009 12:02:35 GMT
Readers of this thread may be interested in thefollowing discussion from the leftie secularists over at Cedar Lounge Revolution on why talk of Coir becoming a political party is no more likely to be successful than its predecessors as Catholic parties since 1992 (and earlier). cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/coir-to-become-political-party/ My own view is that much of this goes back to the "we are the people" mindset - there is a tendency to see one's own personal crotchets as self-evident/God's will, a resulting inability to conduct internal debate without a split and a tendency to treat any criticism of tactics/policies as demonic, and a corresponding belief that anything which gets votes is tereby morally justified (cf the Coir minimum wage poster). There is also a belief in the "one magic formula" theory, that the group is just inches away from a massive breakthrough which will sweep it to power a la Sinn Fein in 1918, and which encourages disregard/contempt for the tough work of building grassroots support one day at a time.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 14, 2009 11:04:11 GMT
Further lunacy. Some No campaigners, possibly including Coir as a whole, are claiming that the NO vote really won the referendum and the result was due to falsification by the Government. One commenter on Ignis Ardens (based in Longford where the most extremist Pixies are to be found) argues that the result cannot be genuine because when they were canvassing they didn't meet anyone who said they would vote Yes. (Ever heard of the tendency of people to avoid confrontation, and to say what the person they are talking to wants to hear?) Given the nature of our beloved politicians, I would not be surprised if there had been some sort of dirty tricks at local level - but to claim that the 20% swing to Yes is solely the product of ballot-rigging implies that the economic collapse, the perception that Ireland would have gone bankrupt without the Euro, the fear that a No vote would make the economic situation worse had no influence on voters at all, and the aggressive efforts of the political parties and media to promote the Yes vote (they didn't do it to the same extent in the first referendum because they didn't realise defeat was a possibility) had no effect on the voters at all. It also, of course, implies that the No campaign did not make any mistakes, need not discuss whether their tactics or agenda are flawed, and can go on deluding themselves that "the people" really support them, without having to produce any evidence that this is the case or do anything to cultivate support. Being paranoid means you never have to take responsibility. thoughtactioneire.blogspot.com/2009/10/lisbon-vote-shamelessly-fixed.html
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 26, 2009 12:45:23 GMT
David Quinn comments on the new programme for government. His expanded version of this in the IRISH CATHOLIC concludes accurately that FF are clearly just another socially liberal party which has no fixed convictions of their own but will accept anythign from a prospective coalition partner. www.irishcatholic.ie/d5/content/new-programme-government
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