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Post by hibernicus on Jul 30, 2010 15:12:41 GMT
Yes indeed - they are certainly doing their best to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But I still don't see how they can lose given the numbers - Labour would have to be mad to go into coalition with FF which is the only alternative. Indeed, the weaker FG are the stronger it makes Labour in post-election coalition bargaining. That's the real worry.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 3, 2010 10:31:34 GMT
A straw in the wind. According to the SUNDAY TRIBUNE, a Labour councillor in Tuam called Keaveney has asked whether it is a good idea to spend large sums of public money on paying for sex-change operations when cutbacks are being imposed on frontline childrens' health services. Labour's LGBT group has lodged a formal complaint against him for advocating discrimination against the transgendered, and it is possible he may be expelled from the party. Debate on financial priorities in this matter will not be permitted at all if they have their way.
Where are the commentators who speak so loudly about authoritarianism, pluralism and free speech when the organisation involved is the Church - where, oh where?.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Aug 16, 2010 12:56:22 GMT
Part of the problem here is lack of pluralism among commentators. Is there anyway of overcoming this, given that media largely operates on market forces?
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 16, 2010 19:27:39 GMT
The blogosphere is an obvious way - but is anyone listening? How can we promote resources like this board?
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 19, 2010 10:31:12 GMT
That is a major question. Blogs are numerous, but most of them are not even noticed.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Aug 23, 2010 12:20:00 GMT
A lot has been tried in regard to promoting this forum - but no one has a winning formula yet.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 23, 2010 13:15:31 GMT
One possibility would be to try to create a blogroll or link to other Irish catholic blogs, but how do we go about doing that? The American blogs are more numerous and more varied, but their situation is somewhat different from ours.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 23, 2010 13:43:23 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 23, 2010 14:45:30 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 23, 2010 15:21:01 GMT
It sounds like deja vu all over again.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Aug 25, 2010 12:08:02 GMT
How did the guy do?
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 25, 2010 15:58:14 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 31, 2010 10:13:14 GMT
I read a profile of Margaret Ritchie in one of the recent Phoenix magazines and my question is whither the SDLP?
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 6, 2010 9:28:10 GMT
Difficult to tell. They seem in better shape than the UUP, which seems to be falling to bits after its defeat in the general election. On the other hand, their new nickname "The South Down and Londonderry Party" does reflect the extent to which they are reliant on a couple of strongholds (add in South Belfast, where they have their third seat and did better than expected in the last election). My guess is they will survive as a niche party dependent on a few personal fiefdoms and on Catholic voters who just can't stomach SinnFein, but they'll never be the majority nationalist party again.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 21, 2010 17:52:26 GMT
An old link from john J reilly's site but I think relevant to this thread. It's a 1990s review of a book by the leader of the US Christian Coalition (when that was in its heyday) discussing the problems of that organisation and its precursor, the Moral Majority, in their attempt to inflence American politics. I think there are some interesting comparisons with Irish attempts in the same direction. For "hot button" mobilisations read the referendum campaigns of the 1980s, and their failure to build much in the way of durable organisations. As regards "grassroots" strategies the big problem is that whereas the old catholic Action groups of mid-century grew out of the formal machinery of the Church and its organisations, these have mostly been captured by liberals or gone into decline. The impression I get is that political efforts from the 1990s have been dominated by people active in prayer groups, which are small and incoherent and don't produce much in the way of organising or political skills. (American Evangelical churches in contrast are like an extensive medical or legal practice - in order to run them you do have to acquire communications and adminsitrative skills which can to some extent be transferred to politics.) www.johnreilly.info/reed.htmEvangelicals and conservative Catholics had no permanent local political organizations. Politics for them was largely something that happened on television. Thus, while they might be important for presidential politics, they were much less important in deciding who sat in Congress or on local school boards. (Most important, they had little say about who would be nominated to run.) There are two general strategies for mobilizing an inchoate voting block, a "rally" strategy or a "grassroots" strategy. The first is a strategy of mailing lists and television. It is the sort of politics for which the term "hot button" was coined, meaning any issue that is certain to attract the attention of easily defined constituencies and, hopefully, provoke them to donate money. A "grassroots" strategy sounds like it should be something homey and neighborly, but in fact it simply means political organization as it has been traditionally understood. It means building permanent local organizations of volunteer workers and precinct captains, people who may pay regular dues but who, much more importantly, can be counted on to donate some of their own labor to a campaign. It has long been known that the best way to maintain such an organization is as a collateral activity of some other institution. Labor unions are very good frames to hang a political party on. The Christian Coalition would eventually show that local churches are, too. An well-organized minority is important enough. There is nothing about its demographics which suggests that it could become the dominant force in American politics. Nevertheless, it is seven years old and a force that must be reckoned with. One can easily imagine it and organizations like it becoming as important as the unions were in their heyday. The problem with this picture, however, is that the unions knew more or less what they wanted. Because they had some vision of how society as a whole should work, they were able to advance beyond their original concern with wages and hours to present coherent policies on everything from foreign affairs to the structure of the health care system. The Christian Coalition, as Reed himself recognizes, is in contrast characterized mostly by what it is against. The failing is fundamental, indeed theological. The fact is that evangelicals have no coherent political theory in their tradition. American evangelicalism is without a theory of natural law, or even of good government. Reed calls his agenda the "pro-family" agenda, a characterization that I doubt many people find informative. Certainly it is an extraordinarily pale allusion to the ancient certainties that an organization purporting to represent Christianity in politics should have. Evangelicals have a foggy premise that government must be bad because the world is bad. They then reach the equally foggy conclusion that the best government is the least government. Thus, they manifest an inordinate preference for gum-up-the-works amendments to the Constitution, such as the proposals for limiting the number of terms legislators may serve and requiring super-majorities to increase not just tax rates, but government revenues. Liberation theologians like to say that they are formulating a theology "from below," giving revolutionary voice to the voiceless masses. American evangelical political theory, such as it is, really is "from below." It has been formulated by people who have never thought of themselves as rulers and, consequently, have no idea how to rule. It is not enough.
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