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Post by hibernicus on Apr 24, 2016 18:41:43 GMT
Good luck with that. The ongoing row over the proposal to merge Cork City and COunty Councils (or the protests in Roscommon over the proposal to move the western suburbs of Athlone from Roscommon into Westmeath) give a good idea of the hornets' nest involved. One of our big problems I think is a combination of extreme localism with extreme centralism. The Healy-Raes are an example of the bad side of the former; a clearer example of a localist politician being unfairly derided is the denunciations often heaped on the Gregory deal then and now. Considering the special problems of the north inner city and the longstanding neglect it faced (related to the decline of the docks and other traditional industries) it was quite reasonable for it to be treated as a special case, and the scandal was that it had to wait for a local deputy to hold the balance of power before something was done.
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Post by Young Ireland on Apr 24, 2016 18:54:07 GMT
Good luck with that. The ongoing row over the proposal to merge Cork City and COunty Councils (or the protests in Roscommon over the proposal to move the western suburbs of Athlone from Roscommon into Westmeath) give a good idea of the hornets' nest involved. One of our big problems I think is a combination of extreme localism with extreme centralism. The Healy-Raes are an example of the bad side of the former; a clearer example of a localist politician being unfairly derided is the denunciations often heaped on the Gregory deal then and now. Considering the special problems of the north inner city and the longstanding neglect it faced (related to the decline of the docks and other traditional industries) it was quite reasonable for it to be treated as a special case, and the scandal was that it had to wait for a local deputy to hold the balance of power before something was done. I don't understand why people are protesting when they will actually be closer to public services than they would be currently. It's not as if the GAA boundaries are going to change as well. As for the Healy-Raes, as a Kerryman who has seen how the south of the county has benefited from their presence in the Dail (I'm from the north), and how the services are generally better there, I think the landslide vote they got in the North in particular was a protest at the way that people have been let down by the Government and their own TDs. The Healy-Raes may not be perfect, but if it allows us in Kerry to stand up for ourselves in the face of increasing centralisation if power in Dublin, then I think they are worth voting for. As it happens, I know that the extreme centralism was a result of the Civil War and then due to perceptions of corruption, but I also wonder if it allowed the secularisation of Ireland at a faster rate than would have been the case under a federal system? It would have happened, but it would have probably been slower (albeit faster in Dublin perhaps).
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 11, 2017 20:13:08 GMT
Desmond Fennell has iust brought out his autobiography, which is a collage of extracts from his publications over the years, with linking commentary. This can be quite interesting (I never knew, for example, that he was a member of Opus Dei as a young man) but I must say it reinforces my misgivings about him as a thinker. Here are a few points for discussion: (1) Fennell is basically an intuitive and not an analytical thinker. This means he comes up with bright ideas which often have a good deal of substance, but he assumes they must be accepted by everyone. He does not really accept the possibility that anyone might have legitimate reasons for disagreeing with his interpretations of reality. (2) He treats the fact that significant numbers of people were discontented with ancien regime Ireland as a sign of the validity of the Irish Revolution, and that significant numbers of people were contented with the post-independence state as proof of its legitimacy. Those who opposed or disliked these processes are assumed to be so insignificant that no notice should be taken of them. When he has to address the question of why large numbers of people were discontented with 50s, 60s and 70s Ireland, he does not treat this as any sort of evidence that there might have been problems with the original revolutionary proiect - he simply dismisses these people as contemptible counter-revolutionaries. (3) He hates what he doesn't like - America and Israel in particular - with a hatred that goes beyond all reason. At one point he suggests that the latest trend from America to be copied by the Dublin elite will be cannibalism in restaurants of the corpses of Al Qaeda Terrorists (his capitals). Elsewhere, having listed several examples of oppressive behaviour by Israeli security forces, all of which are true and outrageous, he goes on to compare the Israelis to "a particularly well-inidoctrinated Nazi battalion in occupied Poland". I suggest he should read Christopher Browning's ORDINARY MEN, which describes a reserve police battalion in occupied Poland shooting 70,000 people - that's the entire population of Waterford, for comparison - within a few months. The Israelis have done bad things, but not on that scale, and to make that equation is to cease to think at all. Elsewhere he suggests there was no anti-semitism in the Middle East before Israel was established. Fennell has written a book about ULYSSES but he forgets the passage where Bloom mentions Iews in Morocco being sold as slaves in 1904. (4) He talks about the blessings of "community" but when the people he is working with achieve certain goals but don't establish "community" in the form he advocates (i.e. extremely decentralised local authorities) he never considers whether this indicates these people might legitimately have different priorities, or are constrained by something other than lack of willpower. (5) When he writes about "Dublin 4" and the "state class" he talks as if they had dropped down from Mars rather than being products of Irish society, formed in other values than those which they now possess, or which possess them rather. (6) He advocates the two-nation theory but doesn't see why it should imply acceptance of partition, on the grounds that the fulfilment of the Irish national proiect requires possession of the entire island. Nationalism is only morally supportable on the basis that the right to national self-determination is reciprocal; take the view Fennell does about supporting the subordination of one nation to another and it becomes a bloody free-for-all. (The same of course applies mutatis mutandis to the Unionists' treatment of the Northern nationalists.) Incidentally, the PHOENIX engages in a monumental piece of hypocrisy when it reviews the book in its current issue and accuses Fennell of Catholic intolerance in supporting two-nationism, when elsewhere in the same issue the PHOENIX reacts to the NI election results by gloating over the prospect of the unionists being squashed like an orange, predicts euphorically that they will soon be outbred by nationalists and can therefore be subiugated without any nonsense about reconciliation, and calls on the Irish government to co-ordinate with SF to bring about this desirable aim as soon as possible. More on Fennell's' autobiography at a later date. It's published by Somerville Press of West Cork and on sale in hodges Figgis for 20 euro.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 11, 2017 20:46:51 GMT
I haven't read his autobiography and don't have any immediate plans to do so, but I think your list of criticisms could pretty much apply to any Fennell book I've read.
Reading Fennell is like listening to someone who is very erudite, imaginative and overbearing. He never seems to display the slighest strain of agnosticism, self-questioning, or hesitancy. Most writers who trade in ideas would allot a fair amount of space to this, but he doesn't. He never asks questions, he just makes assertions.
He also seems to see ideas as subordinate to cultures-- as though the world, or the country, is a checkerboard where various national and regional and social cultures are vying for supremacy. Surely ideas have a certain autonomy, even if they are associated with particular places and groups.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 12, 2017 14:07:09 GMT
In case that seems a bit harsh, I should add that I agree with a great many of the points he makes in his various books. Perhaps the thing I like most about him is that he cares about the whole idea of national culture.
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Post by kj on Jul 6, 2017 16:54:20 GMT
Is it just my computer or is Desmond Fennell's website down? I can never seem to access it.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 6, 2017 19:37:53 GMT
I accessed it OK just now.
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Post by kj on Jul 7, 2017 9:40:31 GMT
Hmm, must be my browser.
I would like to say that whatever one may fault DF's writings with, I really admire the way he walked the walk in the 60s and 70s. He went to the Gaeltacht, learned the language, got involved with the community, participated in establishing Irish radio and tv and was wholehearted about it all. Moral of the story being that with enough determination you can fight your own fight, regardless of the opinions of the majority.
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Post by assisi on Jul 7, 2017 12:30:32 GMT
Hmm, must be my browser. I would like to say that whatever one may fault DF's writings with, I really admire the way he walked the walk in the 60s and 70s. He went to the Gaeltacht, learned the language, got involved with the community, participated in establishing Irish radio and tv and was wholehearted about it all. Moral of the story being that with enough determination you can fight your own fight, regardless of the opinions of the majority. Indeed he's been ploughing a lonely furrow for a long time when many another would have given up.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 21, 2017 19:59:11 GMT
I agree about the value of his Gaeltacht community activism as a concrete contribution; the amount of effort he put into it had damaging effects on his personal life. One problem that strikes me is his vagueness about what "a community of communities" actually means - highly decentralised local government, or some form of direct democracy? There is a sense in which he did "give up" after the fall of the Berlin Wall; he ceased to believe he could actually transform society and settled down to acting as a cynical social observer and recording his reflections in the hope they may be of use to someone after the whole great gazebo breaks up. (BTW a similar change is visible in Peter Hitchens after the formation of the Cameron government in 2010, when he ceased to believe an "authentic" conservative alternative could be created.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 30, 2017 23:39:39 GMT
One problem that strikes me is that while Fennell invokes the precedent of the Greeks fighting off the Persians at the end of BEYOND NATIONALISM as precedent for his hopes, he doesn't really seem to grasp the Greek contribution to thought - I'm thinking particularly of the Socratic dialectic, refining thought through a series of critical questions to achieve clarification. Fennell assumes that whenever he has an idea it must be self-evidently true, and denounces any attempt to clarify what he is saying as misrepresentation. Oddly enough, this post by Edward Feser on the nature of angelic intellect strikes a chord with me here -Fennell really seems to think his statements should be received as if they were the products of a disembodied pure intellect, without reference to their unstated assumptions or personal, social and intellectual consequences: edwardfeser.blogspot.ie/2017/07/cartesian-angelism.html
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jul 31, 2017 10:25:25 GMT
Hibernicus, you've made this claim so often about Fennell, and I wonder is it entirely fair? He's certainly trenchant (too trenchant in my views) but, as far as I can recall, he usually gives reasons for his claims. Is there any particular passage, or passages, you might quote as an example of this? (I acknowledge it's hard to demonstrate a negative in a short selection.)
I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just striking that you've returned to this theme so often in the case of Fennell. I'm not particularly a fan of his, but I'm curious as to why you get this impression so powerfully.
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