The National Way - Where?

THE NATIONAL WAY - WHERE?

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

WHERE do St Thomas More and Samuel Butler have nowhere in common?  Thus runs an old trick question.  The answwere is that they both wrote books entitled "Nowhere": More's Utopia is derived from the Greek ou topos (not place) and Butler's Erewhon is an anagram for nowhere.

In a collection of 14 essays entitled The National Way Forward, Justin Barrett attempts to map the path ahead for Ireland.  He reflects upon the position of our country, the so-called Celtic Tiger, in the aftermath of the X Case, the Maastricht Treaty, the divorce referendum and the Amsterdam Treaty.  He analyses Ireland from a political, economic and moral point of view and proposes some long-term solutions to what he sees as the current crisis.

I believe this is a book which the Pro-Life Campaign should have read and taken to heart prior to the March referendum.  Published well before the Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy Bill, it contains the following observation:

Surely we knew the Supreme Court was politically appointed and, if the Government were not Pro-Life, the Court could not indefinitely remain so?  Surely, we must have understood that a Pro-Life Amendment, no matter how cleverly crafted, could not survive deliberate malevolence on the part of ideologically motivated Justices?  That, plainly, constitutional prohibition on abortion could not forever resist both a hostile legislature and a hostile judiciary?

And there is the most basic question - IF WE DID NOT UNDERSTAND IT THEN, DO WE UNDERSTAND THAT NOW?

If we do not, then it is, as the saying goes, all over bar the shouting.  For new referendum or not, the forces fighting for Life will have committed the cardinal error of short-sightedness and narrow focus, which must inevitably deliver this country up to legalised and widespread abortion - and sooner rather than later.  (The National Way Forward, p. 16, emphasis in original)

So, in his examination of the X Case and its fall out, Mr Barrett seems to dismiss the practicality of any further pro-life amendment, let alone one with a specific wording.  In his analysis of recent Irish history, the X Case is pivotal to the direction the nation has taken, but his treatment of the case in the book's first essay caricatures the issue by subjecting the court to pop-psychoanalysis, and introduces a novel conspiracy theory to which the Hederman judgement can be regarded a key.  There is no doubt that all pro-lifers found the majority judgement in X to be deeply shocking.  But Mr Barrett's conclusion above is unhelpful, to say the least.

Conspiracy theory

In regard to the other meditations, it could be said that Mr Barrett's Weltanschauung is one that follows the masthead of this journal: Pro Vita, Pro Ecclesia Dei, et Pro Hibernia.  However, I do not think too many of the Brandsma Review's commentators would follow him down the roads he takes.  One can sympathise with an economic analysis that is critical of usury and the notion of money.  However, most of us would recognise the importance of both to the global economy.  For all the many faults of the present system, it would be unrealistic and a waste of energy to work on an alternative.

And peddling versions for a conspiracy theory substantially the same as that found in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Sion is not going to help either.  International finance may well have been behind the October Revolution of 1917, but as long as it remains unproved, it is at least unwise to publish the idea as established fact.

In regard to this country, Mr Barrett is right to see moral bankruptcy cutting across Irish society.  But some of his solutions are problematic.  For example, replacing the Oireachtas with a popularly elected executive president with absolute discretion to appoint a cabinet and without any formal opposition is, let us say, worrying.  Then one recalls that in the Republic, the leitmotiv is Plato's wish for a time when philosophers would be kings and kings philosophers.  Colloquially, this may be translated as "I want to be in charge".  But there the comparison between Plato and Mr Barrett ends - even if much of the latter's thought displays an idealisation of Spartan frugality, also evident in Plato.  This idealisation has appeared again and again in western thought: de Valera, whom Mr Barrett despises, was also an admirer of Sparta.

Questionable assertions

Some of Mr Barrett's historical assertions are questionable.  The idolisation of Michael Collins is not founded on wide reading of the 1916-1922 period, and the suggestion that W. T. Cosgrave ordered his shooting would require a lot more evidence than the conjecture offered.

Moving to our own times, Mr Barrett seems to think we can do business with Sinn Féin, as he doesn't think most of its supporters have much in common with the party's socialist platform.  But Sinn Féin's socialist manifesto must surely be taken absolutely seriously.  Sinn Féin have made political gains in the North, and to a lesser extent in the south, on their stated platform.  To think that one can make a deal with them on the basis of some understood alternative agenda that would be more palatable to us, is ludicrous. 

For a long time now, the bulk of the Provisional IRA members have adopted the philosophy and methodology of Marxist guerrillas; and most of the student influx into Sinn Féin has been due to the left-wing anti-establishment marketing of the party following the H-Block hunger-strike election gains.  Maybe their politics have moderated, but this process would need to go a lot further before we could have dealings with them.

Mr Barrett is very dismissive of the SDLP.  I too would criticise the SDLP's adoption of a socialist masthead, and its fruitless association with the British Labour Party and the European socialist parties at Strasbourg.  But it is wrong to dismiss the party which commands the vote of so many nationalists in Northern Ireland at local government and assembly levels.  Until Sinn Féin seriously alters its policies on socio-moral issues - especially on abortion - the SDLP must be preferred by nationalist pro-lifers.

In  regard to Mr Barrett's view on the European Union and further European integration, I have one observation.  I am a Eurosceptic; I have opposed every step toward European integration since the Single European Act of 1987 (I was far too young to vote against joining the Common Market in 1972).  But in spite of all Europe's difficulties, I would not anticipate a European analogue of the American Civil War as he does.

On constitutional matters,  I would not share Mr Barrett's admiration for America's Revolution and Constitution.  The Irish Constitution of 1937 in fact substantially follows Anglo-American democracy, with concessions to the French revolutionary tradition, to Catholic and secular schools of natural law and even with Fascism (the title An Taoiseach and the vocational compostion of Seanad Éireann) and with Communism (look very carefully at Article 43, on private property rights).

The one serious fault I would find in Bunreacht na hÉireannn is the lack of any meaningful separation of powers.  But this is the result of a strong party whip system - an accidental result of our constitution rather than something directly envisaged in it.

To return to the original point of this review: we just have to live with the fact that written constitutions are subject to creative interpretations in court.  This has even manifested itself in civil law jurisdictions.  To give a recent example, the German Supreme Court found crucifixes in Bavarian schools, hospitals and other public buildings to be repugnant to the German Constitution.  The Bavarian people successfully resisted this.

The chapter on the Church I found to be the most unhelpful, as it is very vague about the crisis in Western Catholicism and it proposes no concrete solutions whatsoever.  Mr Barrett also uses terminology such as "traditionalism" and "traditional Catholicism" without defining them.  There are many conflicting ideas about what these terms mean.

The Barrett book is part soap-box oration, part undergraduate monologue proposing solutions to the world's problems over coffee.  I have some advice for the Justin Barrett PR team: never allow your client use photographs of himself with open mouth, midstream in a stirring rally.  It looks like he's ranting.  If the media want to label Mr Barrett as Ireland's answer to Vladimir Zhiranovsky, it is inadvisable to hand them an invitation to do so.

Secondly, do not mention the Gaelic language or the inability of the populace to speak it, if the fada does not appear once in the book, and Irish words are almost uniformly spelt incorrectly.  And do not assume that either the Irish people or the media are stupid.  It tends to provoke a negative reaction.

The National Way Forward is published by the Guild Press, Longford.  194pp.  €7.55

The Brandsma Review, Issue 62, September-October 2002