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| From: Irish Political Review: Editorials |
| Date: August, 2010 |
| By: Editorial |
| Title: Not To Reason Why |
| This is the season of Sommetry,when the mindless Great War slaughter on the Somme is glorified as heroic. The Irish Government has for many years been feeling its way towards full participation in the annual glorification of the slaughter without saying what the purpose of it all was. To glorify the Somme without showing that it was necessary to the achievement of some admirable political aim—and that is what the Irish Government has been doing—is to hold up abstract militarism as an ideal. In recent years Martin McGuinness too has been praising the Somme. He has been praising the courage and bravery of the hundreds of thousands who took part in the blind assault on the prepared German defences. They kept it up in the course of a long Summer day, with each fresh wave from the British trenches walking over the bodies of the previous wave in No-Man's-Land.Read Full Article |
| From: Irish Foreign Affairs: Editorials |
| Date: August, 2010 |
| By: Editorial |
| Title: Editorial |
| Ireland went into denial about the existence of the Second World War. Even Professor Ferriter tells us that we did. He says that we called it 'The Emergency', in our quaint Irish way which is so endearing to our betters when it is not infuriating. What we find in the censored newspapers of the period is reporting of the World War, in which it is never called anything but the World War. But that is neither here nor there. Historical truth does not consist of sordid facts like that. Our new history is a new theology in which truth is not to be tripped up by factual detail. England plays the part of the Creator in the new theology in which all right-thinking people must believe. The Creator of the Second World War presents it to us as a universal conflict between good and evil. We did not participate in this conflict. We were doubting Thomases. And not to participate in such a conflict was much the same thing as denying its existence. And we did in fact deny that a universal conflict between good and evil was happening. And to deny that the conflict that was tearing the world apart was a general conflict between good and evil was to deny its essence. And is there any worthwhile distinction to be made between essence and existence when essence is denied? Existence without essence is rag and bone. Therefore, while we described the rag and bone epiphenomena of Britain's Second World War of the first half of the 20th Century, we denied its transcendent moral essence which was necessary to confer an appropriate immanent moral quality on all its parts, and in doing so we denied its substantive existence. QED…Read Full Article |
| From: Irish Political Review: Editorials |
| Date: July, 2010 |
| By: Editorial |
| Title: Coping With The Future We Failed To Prevent |
| Progressive Governments must not be inward looking. The principle of Sinn Fein, if it was ever progressive, has long been reactionary and stultifying, and the inaccurate translation of it as "Ourselves Alone" expresses the essential truth about it. Ireland, in order to be modern, must be open to the world so that the world might be open to it. Its dynamic must be an integral part of the dynamic of the world market. And yet, when the world market goes awry with drastic consequences for Ireland, the Government—which did what was required of it by the progressive forces—is to be held responsible because it did what was required of it. The Government must do what the people wants. That's democracy. But, when what the people wanted leads to disaster, it is the Government that is to blame. And that's democracy too.Read Full Article |
| From: Labour & Trade Union Review: Editorials |
| Date: July, 2010 |
| By: Editorial |
| Title: The Myth of Ken Coates |
| Ken Coates died on 27th June, 2010. Our sister magazine, Problems of Capitalism and Socialism, extensively covered Ken Coates' successful blocking of the industrial democracy proposals made in the Bullock Report on Industrial Democracy in 1977. Given that coverage there should have been no need to say any more following Coates' death. But the statement below from John Palmer's obituary for Coates in the Guardian on 30th June makes some comment necessary. Otherwise anyone unaware of what went on in the labour movement in the mid- to late seventies would be left with a completely false impression. Read Full Article |
| From: Church & State: Editorials |
| Date: July, 2010 |
| By: Editorial |
| Title: Civil Partnership: The Enlightenment Proceeds |
| The destruction of the family as the means of reproducing the species was implicit in the Enlightenment proclaimed in Europe over two centuries ago. It was declared that individuals were ends in themselves. If they were ends in themselves, then they were under no obligation to submit to social arrangements conducive to the continuation of the species. England dissented from the European Enlightenment, and made war on it when the Enlightenment took the form of the French Revolution. The French Republic proclaimed Enlightenment values as the Rights of Man. It defended itself successfully against the military combination got together to destroy it. Voltaire's satirical joke then became the dominant fact of life in Europe: "This animal is dangerous: when attacked it defends itself". By defending itself against the traditional order of Europe, it made itself a threat to Europe.Read Full Article |