The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Patriotism was big last week in the US. And why not? July 4th was a significant date in the diary. There was the opportunity for the media to consider Obama once more. Particularly in light of General Wesley Clark’s words about John McCain. Clark is something of an Obama proxy (and at one point a suggested VP candidate - but no more) and was duly rolled out on CBS to both burnish Obama’s patriotic credentials and to add a certain military bearing to the campaign.

As reported in the New York Times:

The McCain campaign appeared incensed by comments made Sunday by an Obama supporter, the retired General Wesley K. Clark, that even heroic service by the Arizona senator as a naval aviator in Vietnam did not prepare him for the presidency. “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,” Clark said on CBS.

The response from the Obama campaign?

Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Illinois Democrat, said Monday that “Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain’s service, and of course, he rejects yesterday’s statement by General Clark.”

Which is somewhat like, as the phrase goes, throwing Clark under the bus. Political response from other quarters were - ungenerous.

Robert “Bud” McFarlane, a Vietnam combat veteran who was national security adviser in the Reagan administration, suggested that “this may be part of a larger gambit.” Mr. McFarlane added, “If the opposing candidate doesn’t really have the experience or knowledge or depth in international affairs, then one approach can be, I suppose, to try to deny that Senator McCain does.”

And McCain himself said:

…he thought remarks like General Clark’s were “unnecessary” and that the question of an apology was up to Senator Obama; but he added that the comments seemed to be part of a pattern.

“If that’s the kind of campaign Senator Obama and his surrogates and supporters want to engage in, I understand that. But it doesn’t reduce the price of gas by one penny. It doesn’t achieve our energy independence or make it come any closer. Doesn’t make any American stay in their home who’s at risk of losing it today. And it certainly doesn’t do anything to address the challenges Americans have in keeping their jobs, homes and supporting their families.”

He added a moment later, “I know that General Clark’s comment is not an isolated incident. I have no way of knowing what involvement Senator Obama has in that issue.”

Hmmm…

That said Clark might have a point. Here is the full transcript of the CBS debate:

Clark: He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in Air- in the Navy that he commanded, it wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, ‘I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle it-’

Bob Schieffer: Well-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: ‘ -it publicly.’ He hasn’t made those calls, Bob.

Bob Schieffer: Well, well, General, maybe-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: So-

Bob Schieffer: Could I just interrupt you. If-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Sure.

Bob Schieffer: I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be President.

Bob Schieffer: Really?!

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: But Barack is not, he is not running on the fact that he has made these national security pronouncements.

And on Slate it was also noted that there was a traditional rivalry shading into hostility between the ground war soldiers in Vietnam and the fighter pilots. Guess who was one of the former. Guess how that might have shaped the emotional tone of the response recorded above.

Still, patriotism is a funny thing. As Alexander Chancellor suggested in the Guardian last week…He wants health insurance for all Americans, but Barack Obama still has to prove he’s patriotic.

And prove it he has had to do…

Obama said on Monday that he had always taken his “deep and abiding love for this country as a given” and that “the question of who is - or is not - a patriot all too often poisons our political debates”. I have much sympathy for him. Here is a presidential candidate who wants to take the troops out of Iraq and provide health insurance for everyone, and all anyone wants to talk about is whether he is patriotic enough for the job.

It is sad to see someone who naturally shrinks from vulgar patriotic exhibitionism being forced to wear an American flag pin on his lapel and bang on about the greatness of his country because people doubt his loyalty. In Britain, as in most other nations, love of country is indeed taken “as a given” and rarely questioned in politicians. In America, it is constantly challenged and tested.

Following on from the latter point, there was an interesting debate on this on Left, Right and Centre from NPR last weekend where the issue of why patriotism looms so large in the United States as an aspect of the political discourse was dealt with.

Robert Scheer suggested a guide towards patriotism towards the following quote.

43 In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course, which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.

This is from George Washington on the occasion of his Farewell Address To the People of the United States.

As Scheer said, ‘love of country in all its complexity acknowledging its weaknesses as well as strength…That sort of love of country is admirable…’

It is the politicisation of this concept of patriotism which is particularly striking. Reference was made to a piece in Time about just this topic. Under the headline “The War over Patriotism” Peter Beinart noted that:

When critics challenge Barack Obama’s patriotism, his supporters have a ready reply: True patriotism has nothing to do with little flags on politicians’ lapels. It’s not about symbols; it’s about actions. It’s not about odes to American greatness; it’s about taking on your government when it goes astray.
But there Obama is, in his first TV advertisement of the general-election campaign, talking about his “deep and abiding faith in the country I love.” And there, perched below his left shoulder, is a subtle, but not too subtle reminder: a tiny American flag.

And as Beinart continues:

Obama’s no fool. He may not believe that things like flag pins should matter politically, but he knows the difference between should and does. Since Vietnam, the ability to associate oneself with patriotic symbols has often been the difference between Democrats who win and Democrats who lose. Why couldn’t George McGovern buy a white working-class vote in 1972? Partly, as the great campaign chronicler Theodore White noted, because virtually every member of Richard Nixon’s Cabinet wore a flag lapel button, and no one in McGovern’s entourage did. Michael Dukakis lost in 1988 because as governor of Massachusetts, he vetoed a bill requiring teachers to lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance, a veto the Republicans never let him forget.

Beinart proposes that:

…conservatives generally want to conserve, and that requires a reverence for the past. What McCain’s title implies is that patriotism isn’t a choice; it’s an inheritance. Being born into a nation is like being born into a religion or a family. You may be called on to reaffirm the commitment as you reach adulthood–as McCain did by joining the military–but it is impressed upon you early on, by those who have come before.

That’s why conservatives tend to believe that loving America today requires loving its past. Conservatives often fret about “politically correct” education, which forces America’s students to dwell on its past sins. They’re forever writing books like America: The Last Best Hope (by William J. Bennett) and America: A Patriotic Primer (by Lynne Cheney), which teach children that historically the U.S. was a pretty nifty place. These books are based on the belief that our national forefathers are a bit like our actual mothers and fathers: if we dishonor them, we dishonor ourselves. That’s why conservatives got so upset when Michelle Obama said that “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country” (a comment she says was misinterpreted). In the eyes of conservatives, those comments suggested a lack of gratitude toward the nation that–as they saw it–has given her and the rest of us so much.

And that while:

Conservatives know America isn’t perfect, of course. But they grade on a curve. Partly that’s because they generally take a dimmer view of human nature than do their counterparts on the left. When evaluating America, they’re more likely to remember that for most of human history, tyranny has been the norm. By that standard, America looks pretty good. Conservatives worry that if Americans don’t appreciate–and celebrate–their nation’s past accomplishments, they’ll assume the country can be easily and dramatically improved. And they’ll end up making things worse. But if conservatives believe that America is, comparatively, a great country, they also believe that comparing America with other countries is beside the point. It’s like your family: it doesn’t matter whether it’s objectively better than someone else’s. You love it because it is yours.

Whereas by contrast…

If Reagan best evoked conservative patriotism, many liberals still identify their brand with John F. Kennedy, a leader forever associated with unfulfilled promise. If Reagan conjured the past, Kennedy downplayed it, urging Americans to instead grab hold of the future. He liked to cite Goethe, who “tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment, ‘Stay, thou art so fair.’” Americans risked a similar fate, Kennedy warned, “if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress … Those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”

Obama’s political persona is also deeply bound up with youth, promise and liberation from the constraints of the past. In McCain’s life, patriotism is about replicating and honoring what came before: the son and grandson of admirals becomes a war hero. In Obama’s, patriotism is about escaping what came before: the grandson of an African farmer becomes the embodiment of the American Dream. If McCain’s identity has been shaped largely by inherited tradition, Obama’s is largely the result of personal invention, a deeply American concept…

Obama’s election would, like Kennedy’s, represent a triumph over past prejudice. The election of an African American, like the election of a Catholic, would be a sign that America is–as Michelle Obama implied–a different and better nation than it was before, one more worthy of the patriotism of all its citizens. Liberals are more comfortable thinking about America that way: as a nation that must earn its citizens’ devotion by making good on its ideals. For conservatives, the devotion must come first; politics is secondary. But for liberals, patriotic devotion without political struggle is often empty. Liberals think lapel pins are fine if they inspire Americans to struggle to realize the nation’s promise. But they worry that those symbols can become–especially when wielded by people in power–substitutes for that struggle and thus emblems of hypocrisy and complacency.

Naturally these are broad brush strokes. There are conservatives who cleave to the idea of progress, in both a patriotic and political sense, albeit at a slower rate than many liberals would like. And likewise the conservatism of some supposed liberals is hardly news.

But I think that those caveats accepted it’s a very persuasive argument. In part, as noted above and on Left, Right and Centre, this is partially an artifact of American exceptionalism in terms of it’s history and structure as a nation state with a polity and demos built upon immigration. Granted this is distorted, particularly when we analyse elite structures, but nonetheless it fuels both mythic aspects of the national identity and, arguably, by extension legitimises socio-political constraints within the society (hence the reification of individualism and the aversion to statism). Exceptionalism may be a dubious position to argue from, but in this instance it makes sense (actually, now I think about it splintered makes a similar point about Irish exceptionalism in a somewhat different context - again, I’d agree).

US art historian Albert Boime (author of the fascinating The Unveiling of the National Icons: A Plea for Patriotic Iconoclasm in a Nationalist Era) has a useful example of how the symbols of US patriotic identity collide with the reality US political events when he discusses the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1922. The ‘meanings’ of the Memorial had already been subject to considerable dissension, for example the text above the seated figure of Lincoln says;

IN THIS TEMPLE

AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE

FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION

THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

IS ENSHRINED FOREVER

The point being that the emphasis was not on Lincoln as emancipator but as saviour of the Union. or as Royal Cortissoz, the man who wrote the inscription explained, “By saying nothing about slavery you avoid the rubbing of old sores.” But this tendency to ignore persists to this very day. As James Loewen writes in a piece on the sociology of monumnets in Washington D.C.

Cortissoz’s interpretation of Abraham Lincoln is mirrored to this day in most high school textbooks in U. S. history, which emphasize Lincoln’s role in saving the Union and minimize his interest in ending slavery or granting rights to African Americans.

And this tendency carried through to the ceremonies attending the dedication. African-Americans were segregated into special sections during the dedication of the memorial to the man for who ending slavery was central to his political project. To some degree those meanings were ultimately negated, or at least diminished, by Martin Luther King, Jr’s March on Washington in 1963 and as Loewen says:

The use Americans have made of the Lincoln Memorial has its own history, and this story too the memorial tells well. The National Park Service shows a video with overlapping layers of sound and montage that summarizes many of the portentous events that have occurred here, from Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert to Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech to the arrest in 1971 of 87 members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War for putting a coffin in front of Lincoln’s statue and trying to occupy the memorial. From fathers’ rights to gay rights, abortion rights to Right to Life, groups when they meet in Washington send delegations to the memorial to identify with Lincoln. And why not? The Lincoln Memorial teaches that monuments to the past can speak to our lives in the present.

Loewen concludes his piece by asking:

Patriotism should be proud but not blind, critical yet loving. And liberals and conservatives should agree that if patriotism entails no sacrifice, if it is all faith and no works, then something has gone wrong. The American who volunteers to fight in Iraq and the American who protests the war both express a truer patriotism than the American who treats it as a distant spectacle with no claim on his talents or conscience.

In some senses, perhaps, yes. Certainly an active and engaged citizenry in any state is preferable to a passive and indifferent populace. But arguably a better way of looking at it is to suggest that an ‘open’ patriotism which acknowledges and reflects upon the past while seeking improvements in the present and future is better than a ‘closed’ patriotism which simply sees that past - and the iconic symbols of that past - as a legitimation and validation of the present. And this, incidentally, is not restricted to the United States. On this island we’ve witnessed efforts to detach the past from political life - in essence an attempt to eschew patriotism - as well as efforts to use that past as a reductionist simplification of actions in the present. Neither has succeeded entirely, neither has failed entirely, not least because such reductionist agendas on whatever side misinterpret processes for unchanging truths, and processes are of their nature malleable.

Of course, it’s easier to say that ( ) than to expect a clear-headed consideration of such matters.

And in all this I’m aware I’m discussing this in terms of how the debate is framed in the US and not really considering the virtues or vices of patriotism in and of itself - although obviously indirectly addressing them. That’s another days work. Nor is the base of US exceptionalism addressed, because it’s not just the mythic power of immigration, or indeed an executive Presidency and the identification of state/nation and government, or indeed the utilisation for the simplification of class contradiction, all of which play a part and are indeed also further subjects for discussion. But, then consider how Chavez and Fidel have both utilised patriotic discourse as part of their projects - so this is not restricted to one ideology however hegemonic. Perhaps once more Robert Scheer points the way in a fuller excerpt from his words that I referenced above…

What is real patriotism and what is not? … love of country in all its complexity acknowledging its weaknesses as well as strength seeking improvement, not putting our nation above all others… not using force to pursue imperial ambition…that sort of love of country is admirable…

Very true. Can I add one other thing. At least in the US there is debate about such matters and it is far from the unquestioning one that some might suppose. I think that’s a broadly positive thing.

Jonathan Freedland pointed to a number of quotes by David Cameron from his ‘right and wrong’ speech made in Glasgow during the Glasgow East Byelection. Got to say, you know you’re in trouble when politicians start talking to you as if you’re a particularly obstinate two year old, and our David is doing it in spades in this speech…

Check out some particularly choice examples of what I suspect is one of the more reactionary speeches we’ve heard in a long time…

“With over five million people in our country on out of work benefits, many of them on Incapacity Benefit, welfare dependency is now a crisis for the whole country, not just this corner of it. And you don’t need to come to Glasgow East to know that the casualisation of carrying a knife, and the horrific crime that goes with it is now keeping mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters awake at night in London, in Leeds, in Manchester, in Bristol. It feels as if none of our towns and cities is safe from the tide of violence.

“So I don’t want to come here to Glasgow and make out that this is some uniquely damaged community. It’s a community that’s been damaged all right: but the cause of that damage is wreaking havoc not just here, but everywhere. That’s why we’ve got to learn the lessons properly, and that’s what I want to do today.

“But our mission is to repair our broken society - to heal the wounds of poverty, crime, social disorder and deprivation that are steadily making this country a grim and joyless place to live for far too many people.

“Because while our society is broken today, it is not broken for ever. We can and will repair it. We can and will bring hope and aspiration to places where there is resignation and despair.

“That is why we have to be utterly uncompromising on the key social reforms that will together help us repair our broken society.

On welfare reform, we think we need to end the idea that the state gives you money for nothing. If you can work, you must work. We will insist on it, and believe me, we will stick to our guns when the going gets tough.

“I think the time has come for me to speak out about something that has been troubling me for a long time. I have not found the words to say it sensitively. And then I realised, that is the whole point.

“We as a society have been far too sensitive. In order to avoid injury to people’s feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgemental, we have failed to say what needs to be said. We have seen a decades-long erosion of responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others, deferring gratification instead of instant gratification.

Let me editorialise for a second. I can’t say I heard too much sensitivity between the years of 1979 and 1997. Nor can I say that I saw much deferred gratification in London in the late 1980s or early 1990s amongst those with wealth and power afforded to them in part and encouraged by the Conservatives.

“Instead we prefer moral neutrality, a refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour, right and wrong behaviour. Bad. Good. Right. Wrong. These are words that our political system and our public sector scarcely dare use any more.

Refusing to use these words - right and wrong - means a denial of personal responsibility and the concept of a moral choice.

Let me editorialise again. The reason they’re not used is because a society is a complex thing and it is difficult, if not impossible, to apply such words in a useful or coherent fashion.

“We talk about people being “at risk of obesity” instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise. We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it’s as if these things - obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction - are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.

“Of course, circumstances - where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school, and the choices your parents make - have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make.

Often?

There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth anymore about what is good and bad, right and wrong. That is why children are growing up without boundaries, thinking they can do as they please, and why no adult will intervene to stop them - including, often, their parents. If we are going to get any where near solving some of these problems, that has to stop.

Imagine if there was a Government that understood, really understood, that encouraging personal and social responsibility must be the cornerstone of everything that it did and that every move it took re-inforced that view.

“Saying to parents, your responsibility and your commitment matters, so we will give a tax break for marriage and end the couple penalty. Saying to head teachers you are responsible and if you want enforceable home school contracts and the freedom to exclude you can have it and we will judge you on your results. Saying to police officers you are responsible and the targets and bureaucracy are going but you must account to an elected individual who will want answers if you fail. Saying to business, if you take responsibility you can help change culture and we will help you with deregulation and tax cuts … but in the long run they depend on the steps you take to help tackle the costs of social failure that have driven your costs up and up.

But in the end, the state cannot do it all. In the end, the best regulation is self-regulation, not state regulation. That’s why the family comes first. That’s where we can really turn things around and start to repair our broken society.

“My focus on social reform does not mean for one second that I don’t believe the next Conservative government won’t have urgent work to do - to rebuild our economy or improve our NHS. But the nature of the changes will be different in those areas.

“It is in social policy that we mean to be most bold and radical, and for that I need a mandate. I need to make clear today the scale of our ambition so that everyone knows what they will be voting for at the next election.

“I want a mandate for restoring responsibility to our society. A mandate to call time on the twisted values that have eaten away at our social fabric. A mandate for tough action to repair our broken society.”

The problem being that the speech is unbelievably vague as to what that ‘tough action’ is. Rhetoric David, just rhetoric. But familiar rhetoric. All too familiar.

I think such speeches will bear watching closely over the next eighteen or so months.

Two pieces from last Saturday in the Irish Times indicate the political realities around the same-sex partnership Bill. And these realities are perhaps different to what might be expected. Because far from finding itself outgunned the government was well able to see off internal opposition to the measure. Incidentally, and I don’t know how accurate this is, but word has it that the Green Party was more instrumental in seeing us get to this point than has been suggested in the media.

Anyhow, there was a brilliantly boilerplate piece from Breda O’Brien which argues that:

It takes courage to champion traditional marriage, knowing it will unleash invective from alleged liberals.

ARE YOU now, or have you ever been, homophobic? Homophobia should mean an irrational fear or dislike of homosexuals. However, the definition has been expanded to cover any opinion that some supporters of gay marriage don’t like.

It’s very convincing (at least to her), particularly when to support her thesis she brings in the following:

Robert Jay Lifton, in his classic text on thought control in totalitarian China, discussed the “thought-terminating cliche” as a tactic to ensure conformity. He spoke of compressing “far-reaching and complex problems” into “brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases” that prevent real analysis. Homophobia has been reduced to just such a thought-terminating cliche.

And the application of that to the current situation is so self-evident as to be beyond question (at least for her).

By attributing any opposition to their views to homophobia, activists attempt to short-circuit engaging with the arguments. However, given that we do not live in a totalitarian regime, all it achieves is to undermine the effectiveness of the term where there is real anti-gay discrimination. It becomes merely a bullying tactic.

Senator Jim Walsh is one of the architects of a motion on marriage put before the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party. He commented that when an argument has merit, there is never a need to resort to personal attack. It is only when their arguments are weak that people resort to vitriol and intimidation.

Isn’t he right? So, who are these ‘activists’? Wait a minute…she only quotes the following example…

Matt Cooper of the Last Word radio show asked Walsh if he was homophobic.

Now, I have no idea at all as to Matt Coopers views on civil partnership, or indeed ‘traditional’ marriage, but for some bizarre reason - perhaps the fact that he is a journalist, and yes - the presenter of the Last Word radio show, I’ve never seen him as a gay ‘activist’.

And neither does Breda O’Brien because she continues:

No doubt the presenter would argue that the public has a right to know where people stand. It is interesting to analyse what kind of actions will lay you open to this “have you stopped beating your wife?” type of question.

Indeed. No doubt. So, no gay activists there then. How odd.

The motion, signed by 26 members of the parliamentary party, is an attempt to balance the needs of all kinds of families with the need to protect the most pro-child institution we have - traditional marriage. The text says:

“That the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party calls on the Government to ensure when prescribing civil partnership legislation that they ‘guard with special care’ (article 41.3.1) the fundamental position of the family. It acknowledges that all forms of the family are entitled to help and support, but calls on the Government to continue giving special support, including unique financial and legal protections, to the institution of marriage because of its uniquely pro-child nature, thereby protecting the traditional family unit “as the necessary basis of social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the nation and the State’ (article 41.1.2).”

Interesting. Breda doesn’t consider that from a parliamentary party numbering over a 100 that this might allow one to…

…dismiss the signatories and others who spoke in favour of the motion as a renegade rump: convenient [to do so], but wrong. It takes courage for a politician to champion traditional marriage, in the full knowledge that it will unleash invective from alleged liberals whose tolerance extends only to those who agree with them.

But just under a quarter does sound a bit like a rump. And by the way, courage of whatever sort held by members of a group doesn’t exclude the possibility of that group being a rump either.

Both sides of this argument are motivated by important values. Gay activists believe they are being relegated to second-class citizenship if they are denied access to marriage. They are also concerned about the welfare of children, in that they want legal protection for children being parented by gay couples.

Right. But we know which side is, more in sorrow than in bigotry as it were, correct…

Are there objectively justified reasons to continue to support heterosexual marriage in special ways? I believe there are. Traditional marriage is supported by the State because it is widely acknowledged as the best place to bring up children.

But… well no, continue… we’ll come back to it later…

Does the gender of parents matter? We are only having this debate because adults believe gender matters hugely. A lesbian or gay person would be deeply offended if it was suggested that they should just settle down with a person of the opposite sex. Yet the gender of parents is not supposed to matter to children at all. For adults to achieve alleged equality, some children will have the right to be reared by a mother and father, where possible, taken away.

Yes, indeed. But of course, what we’re getting here is a broad ranging attack when the actual focus of the issue is very narrow. Think about it. The same-sex partnership bill. Yet O’Brien extends this out to encompass a range of areas. And she conflates what the bill will usher in with ‘traditional marriage’ and ’sweeping changes to our understanding of marriage’. I think that’s pretty weak.

But returning to her point about ‘objectively justified reasons to continue to support heterosexual marriage’, by which she means to reify it above all other forms of partnership/marriage, she offers no evidence or references at all to sustain her argument. “… it is widely acknowledged as the best place to bring up children…” is an assertion. No more.

Then we are treated to the near risible…

Incidentally, Walsh was reared by a lone parent, his mother. He feels qualified to say the input of both genders is vital

Well, I was raised by two parents (actually it’s a bit more complicated than that with an extended family living in the one house, but on paper that was the structure), heterosexual as it happens, and I feel equally qualified to say the input of neither is vital…

But sure that’s a load of old cobblers too, just like Walsh’s contribution being more valid due to his family background. It’s not what I ‘feel’ that is important. Or what the good Senator feels, but what evidence based data is available. That, and the reality that non-nuclear family formation has been an aspect of human societies from their start. And what is almost, but not quite, amusing is the way in which she proposes a range of problems based in the sexual orientation of the protagonists which occur with greater frequency in supposedly ‘traditional’ family structures…

Children in gay relationships may be the offspring of a previous heterosexual relationship, or of surrogacy or sperm donation, or because of the adoption by one partner under the guise of being single. All of these situations present challenges, and some are minefields where adult needs may be prioritised over children’s needs.

In sperm donation, for example, often a decision is made to exclude the father from the child’s life from conception.

Or the father isn’t known, or whatever. Hardly unique, hardly unprecedented. The rights of fathers in this case has no bearing on the sexuality of those involved in a couple, and realistically never did.

Lesbian and gay couples involved in co-parenting children of previous unions are subject to the stresses and strains of any second union. Children often resent what they see as the usurping of a biological parent’s role, even when the new partner is not gay.

It’s the last part of the last sentence which is crucial. Incidentally, in a society where such structures are frowned on - where a chill factor is present towards them (even though I, and Breda O’Brien, both know that they have happened in the past, in the present and will continue into the future) is arguably one is piling just another pressure onto the children.

But, remember also, there is no provision for adoption in the Government Bill. So O’Brien is now talking about intruding into de facto situations, i.e. non-heterosexual couples who parent children from previous relationships which will exist one way or another, by preventing de jure recognition.

But lest this seem to be a reactionary screed there is a pulling back towards the end…

No one is querying the ability of gay people to parent. There will be circumstances, such as abandonment by or death of biological parents, where parenting by a non-biological “social” parent, including a gay partner, is the best remaining option. These should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, not by sweeping changes to our understanding of marriage.

So in extremis even a gay person can be a ’social’ parent. I like that ’social’ bit. Actually, no. No I don’t like it at all. Because her definition is fairly offensive, not simply because it diminishes the reality of parenting in this instance - which it does - but in all instances of non-traditional parenting (and once more, the phrase ‘non-traditional’ is near meaningless because all forms are and have been ‘traditional’ in the sense of being used previously). By precisely the same measure presumably adoptive parents are also ’social’ parents or step parents, or whoever.

And remember, all this to justify the idea that Senator Walsh’s ideas are not those of a ‘rump’ when it comes to the terms of the civil-partnership bill.

Noel Whelan in a good piece contextualises the political aspects of this and throws a certain light on the rump.

He notes that: Jim Walsh’s opposition to the same-sex civil partnership Bill has met with little support in FF.

And he continues that:

Like many Senators who don’t or no longer have Dáil ambitions, he has been content to maintain a low profile, nursing the select group of councillors who ensure his re-election.

Now, however, he has decided to put himself front of house on no less sensitive a subject than that of civil partnership for same-sex couples. Although his opposition to the proposal, and that of the other Senators and deputies supporting his motion, only became public this week it has been in the offing for several months.

Last February a weekly newspaper available in the porch of Catholic churches carried a front-page story detailing how opposition to the Government’s civil partnership proposal was growing within the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party…

He raises the obvious question as to why…

…this group of Senators and TDs did not go public with their opposition to the Government proposal before now. Nothing was heard from them, at least publicly, when Michael McDowell set up the Colley Group to explore options, nor indeed when the group published its options paper in late 2006. Nothing was heard from them before or during last year’s general election campaign, when the Fianna Fáil manifesto included an express promise to legislate for civil partnership.

Far from the courageous ‘championing of traditional marriage’ by a non-rump, we see something slightly different:

Walsh and his colleagues had an even better opportunity to reject plans for legislation on civil partnership when the programme for government negotiated between Fianna Fáil and the Green Party was put to the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party in May 2007.

That programme included an even stronger commitment to introduce the legislation and was approved unanimously by the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party, of which Walsh was a member. No opposition was voiced to these proposals then either.

Whelan suggests a possible reason for such strange reticence.

…from the Seanad record itself…I found just one previous contribution from Walsh on the issue of civil partnership legislation.

That contribution ran to four words. On April 17th last a number of Senators asked Leader of the House Donie Cassidy when the promised legislation for civil partnership would be forthcoming. Cassidy confirmed that the heads of the relevant Bill were at an advanced stage, that the legislation was “being given serious consideration”, and that “one section remains to be agreed by Cabinet”.

The next intervention from Walsh simply states “there is no rush”.

Walsh and others in the parliamentary party who oppose civil partnership for same-sex couples were clearly relying on the traditional strategy of those who oppose reform - delay.

Whelan doesn’t mince his words either:

Listening to Walsh speak about his motion on local and national radio this week I found his arguments to be vague, uninformed and ungenerous.

And by contrast Whelan looks to Fianna Fáil backbencher Charlie “Tallaght” O’Connor:

O’Connor, in his own inimitable way, spoke sensitively and passionately about the entitlement of same-sex couples to a legal structure and status for their relationships as a human right.
….

His speeches acted as important catalysts for change within the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party.

More than one Fianna Fáil deputy has been reported as saying: “If Charlie can wear it, so can I.”

Perhaps [incidentally, amusing how "Charlie" is becoming the touchstone of all that is folksy about FF - all those speeches dropping in the inevitable reference to his constituency having an impact obviously...], but perhaps, unlike the characterisation by O’Brien the reality is that this measure being introduced is essentially a stop-gap, which ironically is accepted by many social conservatives both here and elsewhere. Minimalist? Surely. Note again there is no provision for adoption. A stop-gap? Yes, because O’Brien et al aren’t far wrong. The introduction of civil partnerships can have only one destination which is full parity, and the exemplary effect of legislating this measure will assist in that. For me it is remarkable to see the progress that has been made on this issue over the past two decades. But it remains halting progress.

Still however much this is only a half measure I find it hard to disagree with Whelan…

Thankfully, a large majority within the parliamentary party now seem to adopt the O’Connor rather than the Walsh approach.

And consider again his thoughts about the arguments put forward by the latter, that they were ‘vague, uninformed and ungenerous’.

Much the same can be said about those of Breda O’Brien.

There truly is something a bit parodic about Michael O’Leary. The confrontational public, and for all we know private, image. The idea that has gained a currency in Irish society that he, and Ryanair, somehow single handedly altered the European aviation industry (not true… ). The off the cuff statements, that like RyanAir advertising, are - despite appearances - hugely considered and so on… That said, it makes great (if unbelievably irritating) copy, and is an excellent promotional strategy.

Still, reading today that:

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: A DECISION by the European Parliament to include aviation in its CO2 Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) could eventually cost consumers an additional €50 on every flight, the chief executive of Ryanair has warned.

…I can’t help but feel he’s got his priorities a little - skewed.

Michael O’Leary of Ryanair said the ruling, which parliamentarians described as an “enormous stride” in safeguarding the environment against greenhouse gases, would not reduce emissions, but instead “further damage European airlines” at a time when oil costs some $140 a barrel.

“These clowns in the European Parliament seem determined to destroy the European airline industry with these discriminatory taxation penalties,” he said.

“Aviation is not the cause of, nor the solution to, CO2 emissions or global warming. Increasing taxation on air travel will have no effect on either emissions or global warming, it will just raise the cost of air travel for ordinary European consumers.”

He would, of course, have been more accurate had he said that aviation is not the sole cause, nor the single solution to CO2 emissions or global warming. But of course it is a major contributor and it is part of the solution. Which makes his point that it won’t decrease emissions a bit odd because if it does hit demand for travel then passenger numbers drop and so do journeys made. And the reality of climate change does require ordinary European passengers, or extraordinary ones, to accept that there will be changes in the future.

And it’s interesting to look at the stats because in the European context we read that…

Emissions from aviation currently account for about 3% of total EU greenhouse gas emissions, but they are increasing fast – by 87% since 1990 – as air travel becomes cheaper without its environmental costs being addressed. For example, someone flying from London to New York and back generates roughly the same level of emissions as the average person in the EU does by heating their home for a whole year.

The rapid growth in aviation emissions contrasts with the success of many other sectors of the economy in reducing emissions.

Without action, the growth in emissions from flights from EU airports will by 2012 cancel out more than a quarter of the 8% emission reduction the EU-15 must achieve to reach its Kyoto Protocol target. By 2020, aviation emissions are likely to more than double from present levels.

Interesting to note that the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has “estimated that aviation is responsible for around 3.5% of anthropogenic climate change, a figure which includes both CO2 and non-CO2 induced effects” … which is close to it’s percentage of EU gas emissions.

3.5% may seem relatively little, but looking at the figure for transport as a total of emissions (c. 15%) we see that it is about a quarter. So a quarter of all emissions of all transport globally is caused by aviation. I wouldn’t be investing in the airlines if I were Michael… And incidentally if ever an excuse for EU sponsored action were needed, for national governments tend to run scared of the O’Leary’s, Bransons and Smurfits of this world…

A further cause of his discomfort might be the following…

…a new regulation debated yesterday could mean passengers will soon be able to see exactly what they have to pay for their flights when booking online.
Under the regulation, fares displayed would have to include all taxes and charges that are generally added to the basic ticket price as the online booking process proceeds. The ruling should come into force later this year.

It’s all politics… it truly is… heh, heh…

I may not have mentioned On the Media, from National Public Radio, but it provides an excellent look at the US (and international) media available as a podcast here.

One of the most useful aspects of it is the transcript of every show. As an aside it’s intriguing to see how little text fits a ten minute slot. Anyhow, recent editions have considered reports on evangelical Christians in the U.S. (making the chastening point that the numbers estimated for them may be grossly inflated), media in Zimbabwe and the Chinese government PR for the Olympic Games.

I’m really coming to the conclusion that for all it’s faults, the NPR segment of the US media, is easily the equal of the more feted BBC. And on that note can I recommend the entertaining, but fundamentally serious, ‘It’s all Politics’ and the really quite remarkable ‘This American Life” which as might be expected addresses through interview slices of US life (and in particular their show from 3/3/08 about a room in the New York City Board of Education building which is set aside of teachers who have been suspended for various infractions - a strangely compelling tale).

Anyhow, On The Media had a fine piece in their last edition about profanity. Remembering George Carlin who died recently it discussed how there remain words that still can’t be discussed on radio, or television. Or, and this is an important proviso, not on all television.

George Carlin had an act that went as follows…

There are 400,000 words in the English language and there are seven of ‘em you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is - 399,993 to 7.

They must really be bad.

They’d have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven -

- bad words!

No bad words - bad thoughts, bad intentions, and words.

You know the seven [words], don’t you, that you can’t say on television?

As On The Media noted these were ‘A word for excretion, for urination, for having sex, for breasts… and three words so radioactive we can’t even describe them’. I like that term ‘radioactive’, it suggests that it is the words themselves that have power rather than that power being attributed to them by others.

Or as Carlin put it…

“Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that’ll infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.”

More recently, as Glenn Carvin, TV critic for the Miami Herald noted on NPR, Bono was slapped on the wrist for the following :

[CLIP]

BONO: That’s really, really [BLEEP]‘in brilliant. And -

[LAUGHTER]

- really, really great.

[LAUGHTER]

GLENN GARVIN: The FCC got complaints over Bono’s use of the F word, which they very curiously decided was not something they could penalize because he used the word as an adverb -

BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS]

GLENN GARVIN: - rather than as a noun or a verb.

There’s more than one of us who might have used that excuse, had we known it, in the past.

But there are oddities…

GLENN GARVIN: The show Deadwood on HBO used the F word so often that a website actually began counting them and working out what it called the FPM.

That’s F words per minute. In over three seasons it averaged 1.56 F words per minute, which is a pretty impressive total, really.

The paradox being that as subscription cable has an increasing number of television programmes that feature the vernacular, the number of complaints to the FCC has increased exponentially, as Garvin relates:

There were 14,000 complaints to the FCC in 2002. In 2003 it was up to 170,000. And the FCC is now so far behind on logging these complaints that we only have statistics available through the first half of 2006, but for just the first six months of 2006, more than 327,000 complaints. So, not everybody is cool with this, by any means.

And the reason for this? Well, you’re looking at it.

I think that the Parents Television Council, which has truly made it easy for its members to lodge complaints through its website, the reason they exist is that there are a lot of people truly offended by this, who don’t like it. They’ve got over a million members.

But Garvin is of the opinion:

I think, frankly, America’s all mixed up about this. I don’t think Americans know what they want. I don’t doubt that people are really ticked off. You know, Gallup and these organizations do polls all the time, and they show repeatedly that a solid majority of Americans think there’s too much sex and too much violence and too much swearing on television.

Then you turn around and you look at the Nielsen ratings, and more people than ever are watching television. And, what’s more, increasingly they prefer cable television, where the sex and the violence and the dirty words are far more than they are on broadcast. And I don’t think we’ve made up our minds quite yet which direction we’re going to go on this.

The obvious thought is that there is no mind to be made up. As with its near twin, pornography, profanity is acceptable within constraints. So therefore we have areas of the media (and this is of true of Ireland and the UK as it is of the US, although to a markedly lesser extent) where it is permissible to have strong language, and other areas where it is not.

Indeed the ‘confusion’ and ‘mixed up’ aspect of this seems to me to be more akin to hypocrisy, one where the public expression of offense is more important than the reality which is - even now - largely ‘clean’ mainstream media. I can’t help but think that this is an infantilising of people, but, that said, as Garvin notes ‘people are really ticked off’.

NPR also talked to Parents Television Council president Tim Winter shortly after the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favour of mainstream media outlets and ‘fleeting’ usages of expletives and against fines which the FCC had imposed in the wake of a string of cases including the Bono example.

He argues that ‘a Supreme Court decision against a primetime expletive would benefit society at large’.

TIM WINTER: When you hear an expletive aired on an award show and then again the next year, the same award show, a different celebrity utters the same word, at some point in time this no longer becomes fleeting; it becomes a pattern.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: A pattern that, according to Winter, the networks don’t mind.

TIM WINTER: I think the networks not only didn’t discourage their celebrities from doing that, I think there’s some sort of tacit encouragement, that they want the stars to be edgy because they are looking for young teen audiences that the advertisers want most.

His antagonism is fuelled by his personal circumstance…

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The PTC’s motto is “Because our children are watching.” And Winters means it because, in fact, he’s watching his child watching.

TIM WINTER: As a father of a nine-year-old daughter, it became abundantly apparent to me several years ago just how impactful the media was on small children, regardless of how diligent a parent is at protecting what their children are watching.

But the problem is that in the real world this breaks down, for obvious reasons. Open your door, step outside. Or more likely sit around your kitchen table. And even on television there are paradoxes and contradictions.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Context is key to avoiding an FCC reprimand. We spoke with FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein in 2005 and 2006. He explained why Bono’s use of the F word during The Golden Globe Award was indecent, while expletives littered through the film Saving Private Ryan, aired on broadcast TV, were not.

And yet, Bono is speaking as Bono speaks. And although no fan of his, in almost any respect, it seems almost perverse to chastise him and yet to allow the use of expletives in Saving Private Ryan.

JONATHAN ADELSTEIN: In the case of the Bono incident, it was gratuitous. It was during an awards show when parents would not be apprised that that kind of language would be used. In the case of Saving Private Ryan there was many different disclosures done in advance.

Even Senator John McCain went on television before the movie was aired to say that parents may want to be careful about the kind of language that’s being used here. This kind of language is a part of the very fabric of war, and so to change that would change the nature of the film.

We found that, in that context, that certainly use of the language was not indecent. And I’m really disappointed, frankly, that a lot of stations decided not to air it, and I’m concerned that we may be having something of a chilling effect on speech, and we need to avoid that in every way possible.

Of course Adelstein is wrong. “That kind of language is a part of the very fabric of war…” could be easily amended to “That kind of language is a part of the very fabric of the entertainments industry…” or “That kind of language is a part of the very fabric of our society…” and the truth is that most uses of expletives are not meant in an indecent sense but as a sort of reflexive vocalisation to add emphasis.

And Brooke Gladstone asked the obvious, and entirely fair question:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But how can you avoid that, he told us, when the FCC has no consistent criteria for judging what is indecent?

JONATHAN ADELSTEIN: If you look at the so-called Golden Globes case, where Bono used the F word with regard to an award that he got, it wasn’t certainly sexual in nature but we found that it may have been.

And once you go down that path, all of a sudden you have the whole vocabulary in front of you, and you need to make these determinations. And, in fact, I can see why broadcasters would be somewhat confused about what is and what isn’t permissible.

I mean, I think we need to be very careful about how we draw the line here, because the Supreme Court gave us a real short leash on which to determine what is and isn’t indecent. If we overstep in these cases and the Court knocks us down, we could potentially lose what limited authority we have to protect children from indecent material forever. It would actually take a constitutional amendment amending the First Amendment to be able to get the FCC authority back to limit material that we could all agree would be inappropriate for children.

Incidentally, let’s just note that the FCC took the more intrusive line under the Bush administration. Politics is central to this as well.

And politics is central to a complementary piece in the Guardian this week by Peter Preston warning that although:

Ludicrous and lacking common sense, censors were once sent packing. But now they’re back

He notes that:

It’s 40 long years since the Theatres Act swept the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship squad away. Goodbye to immobile, goose-pimpled nudes, shivering on plinths. Hail to the drugged-out hippies of Hair. Welcome, up to a point, to Oh! Calcutta! Here was one great liberal battle won. We’d pulled the dead hand of prim, bureaucratic authority away from our action. Unless, that is, it happened to be called Ofcom.

And here’s the thing. Our old friend the F-word raises it’s head again.

What? You thought Ofcom just fined phone-in companies and lectured the BBC on local video reporting? Read this summer’s low-profile collection of rulings, and be disabused. The F-word makes many people furious, anticipating other terrifying spectacles.

And it’s not just the F-word… once more our old “friends” U2 appear, continuing their trail of destruction through what remains of our popular culture…

Or…try a cameo gig by U2 on The Simpsons (Channel 4, April 15) when one guy in the band called another a “wanker”. Apparently, Ofcom “research indicates that the word ‘wanker’, although quite mild to many people, is clearly offensive language”. So it’s upset to see it scheduled when kids might be eating their suppers. Verdict: a slapped wrist for the “compliance and acquisition teams at C4″, plus more procedural reviews - and a robust ban on premature fondling.

And…

…Try the shambles of seven different shows on four different MTV channels. This includes some very late night text messages on MTV France as well as our problems under rule 1.16, where the rude words were bleeped but other truncated references to body parts and bodily functions remained. And, inevitably, “there was also a conversation about penis size and the age and way in which one interviewee started ‘wanking’” - subject matter deemed “inappropriate at a time (7.30pm) when children were likely to be watching” and therefore a clear breach of rule 1.17 (”designed to protect under-18s from explicit representation of, or discussion about, sexual behaviour unless it is editorially justified”). For which sins, plus a discussion on celebrity drug-taking where the celebs weren’t put under enough censorious pressure, MTV Networks is fined £225,000.

Preston raises the reasonable point that:

Why must we reel in shock when one of Bono’s boys uses a “quite mild to many people” expletive on The Simpsons, while anyone who’s watched that show knows it can display acrid wit at any time of day or night: if you’re sophisticated enough to watch it, and to be allowed to watch it, one wank is neither here nor there.

Those of us with a bone to pick with Bono can think of much better reasons to keep him and ‘his boys’ off our screens. Crimes against music. Say no more.

As for the “inappropriate” discussion likely to harm “under-18s”, have our regulators and legislators become totally separated from their trolleys? At what age does parliament - amid much wittering about teenage sex - think the practice begins? You can join the army at 16. How much “explicit representation” frightens the horses - or the Taliban?

But Preston recognises a broader cultural problem - or hypocrisy, to use the technical term -

What you see here, alas, is familiar Westminster dither as they put “light-touch” regulation into place, and officialdom’s apparatus of imbecility thus ensured. I switched on MTV at random at 6.15 one evening and watched Girls Aloud, bosoms bursting out of whore corsets, rubbing themselves against cod French aristocrats in an orgy of pop sex, as usual. Did anybody complain about kids watching that? Of course not. Yet one trigger word beginning with W, D, C or S sets Ofcom’s wheels turning: and frankly makes wankers of us all.

He has a point.

Anyone trying to contact me on the worldbystorm email over the past three or four weeks could you try again, but without attachments? I only realised today that it wasn’t functioning correctly and hadn’t been for some time. It is possible an email with attachments sent on or around the 11th of June may be the cause of the problem. Apologies to anyone expecting a response.

Reading the IT today.

AFTER 18 months of uneasy cohabitation, Austria’s grand coalition government collapsed yesterday after a row triggered by Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty

Ooops…

It’s not that there hadn’t been problems up until this.

Austria’s conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) walked out of an administration brought to a standstill by disagreements on healthcare, reform, pensions, taxes and education.

But a number of x’s pencilled in in boxes a month back contributed to the eventual demise…

The straw that broke the grand coalition’s back, however, was a letter by Social Democrat (SPÖ) chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer to the best- selling Kronenzeitung tabloid that said Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty reflected a “widespread unease about the EU and its politics”.

Mr Gusenbauer wrote that EU-critical sentiment was on the rise in Austria, too, and could be best tackled by ratifying future EU treaties by referendum. Although Austria has already ratified the Lisbon Treaty, Mr Gusenbauer suggested that if any changes were made to the text to help the Irish, then ratification should be put to the vote in Austria.

Which in some respects is fair enough, but appears in this context to be less a call for transparency than a move to mark out political terrain.

It’s a tricky balance to pull off too…

Yesterday the SPÖ party board agreed a 12-point programme recognising “European unity” but formalising the promise of “referenda for future treaty changes that touch on Austria’s basic interests”.

Which is somewhat less stark than the original letter, and it would be interesting to know does this cover amendments to the Lisbon Treaty? In any event, wouldn’t changes in the text require a re-ratification across the EU?

And the politics?

Latest polls give the ÖVP 32 per cent support, a five-point lead over the SPÖ. But the last 18 months of political stalemate have sapped the two parties’ strength while boosting the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), which, at 20 per cent, has overtaken the Greens as Austria’s third party.

Eight years after entering government with the FPÖ and triggering an EU diplomatic crisis, the ÖVP vowed yesterday not to let history repeat itself.

In a way the pity about this is not that the principles, either pro or anti, were at the root of this but that it appears to have been the result of party politicking. After all, if the coalition were willing to wave this through over the past year or so, it seems almost perverse to raise objections at this stage. And that is a lesson about the way in which European matters are often utilised within states, either as scapegoats for internal issues or as unrealistically utopian exemplars.

This is the first significant aftershock of Lisbon, but I’ll bet it won’t be the last.

A piece in the Irish Times yesterday by Michael Parsons (incidentally and on a tangent, who is Michael Parsons? Is he the UK Times journalist? It is not clear). Under the heading ‘It is time to shut down the unworkable European Parliament’ he argues that ‘Abolishing this costly and pompous institution would be a good start in rebuilding faith in the EU’.

Okay. I look forward to a concise forensic analysis of the flaws of the European Parliament.

LAST APRIL, Italy held a general election to elect the country’s 62nd government since the end of the second World War. The “comeback kid”, Silvio Berlusconi, returned to power courtesy of Il Popolo della Libertà - a new political force he created by merging his Forza Italia party with the Allianza Nationale. But the merger doesn’t appear to have extended to the European Parliament where the original Italian parties remain cosily ensconced in contradictory alliances with both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

That does seem contradictory!

Confused?

No, not really. Contradiction and confusion aren’t synonymous. But continue:

During the Lisbon referendum debate (in which most of our MEPs played a dismally inconsequential role) some Yes campaigners argued that people on the No side should find out more about Europe and its institutions. But trying to unravel the structures - never mind the workings - of the European Parliament would tax the patience of all but the most ardent Europhile.

So, Michael is going to enlighten us.

Fianna Fáil’s four MEPs are members of the Union for Europe of the Nations (UEN). Who else is in it? Apart from the Allianza Nationale, the party has members from Poland’s Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (the party founded by the Kaczynski twins) and the Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe Piast (the Peasants’ Party), plus others from Latvia, Lithuania and Denmark. The party’s charter begins by stating that the UEN is “united in favour of a European Union founded on the right of peoples to express themselves by democratic means”.

Fine.

Fine Gael is part of the Group of the European People’s Party and European Democrats. Members include Forza Italia and other centre-right parties such as the British Conservatives and Germany’s Christian Democrats. They “want a Europe which creates opportunity and wealth within a single market, competitive at world level, and which at the same time promotes the wellbeing of everybody, not only in Europe, but also in the rest of the world”.

Which doesn’t really address the issue raised initially. Party and bloc formation is interesting. And sure, it’s replete with contradiction. But the idea that there is something odd about different national parties coalescing in like-minded, albeit broad, coalitions is hardly unprecedented. Surely any political party, bar the most narrow, is itself a coalition.

He goes on…

Mary Lou McDonald is a member of an outfit called Confederal Group of the European United Left - Nordic Green Left. Sinn Féin’s allies include MEPs from the Communist parties of France, Italy, Portugal and Greece and, just to add a bit of variety, Denmark’s Socialist Peoples’ Party.

Actually that is variety, because the SPP is, as John Palmer noted here or hereabouts recently, quite EU friendly in that group. But so what? That proves nothing one way or another.

The complex permutations involving Ireland’s 13 MEPs pale into insignificance compared to the stupefying task of tracking the cross-pollination of all 785 members. In 2006 (the most recent full-year figures available) the European Parliament’s budget was €1.32 billion, of which nearly half went on salaries for almost 6,000 administrative staff. In 2007, for the 13th consecutive year, the European Court of Auditors refused to approve the EU’s budget.

Problem is none of this is anywhere near as complex as he suggests. Sure, there is an oddness about the two main Irish political parties and their respective homes, or rather that of Fianna Fáil. But that is a product of Irish national politics having two essentially centre-right political parties dominating our polity. It’s not so much a case of ‘there can only be one’, as that the EPP/ED can only accommodate one (at least while FG has the franchise on being the Irish EPP/ED member. Does anyone know are there other situations where there are two parties of the right, or left, in a single state and both are represented in the same EU Parliament group?).

Nor is it ’stupefying’ to track the 785 members (and incidentally, nice linkage between the EU Parliament and the EU’s budget… a couple of intervening sentences might have indicated the relevance of the connection between the two - or not). Wiki does a fine job in describing the structures of the EU Parliament.

The European Parliament (Europarl or EP) is the only directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union (EU). Together with the Council of the European Union (the Council), it forms the bicameral legislative branch of the Union’s institutions and has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world.[1] The Parliament and Council form the highest legislative body within the Union. However their powers as such are limited to the competences conferred upon the European Community by member states. Hence the institution has little control over policy areas held by the states and within the other two of the three pillars of the European Union. The Parliament is composed of 785 MEPs (Member of the European Parliament), who serve the second largest democratic electorate in the world (after India) and the largest trans-national democratic electorate in the world (342 million eligible voters in 2004).

And the party blocs?

MEPs in Parliament are organised into seven different parliamentary groups, including over thirty non-attached members known as non-inscrits. The two largest groups are the European People’s Party-European Democrats (EPP-ED) and the Party of European Socialists (PES). These two groups have dominated the Parliament for much of its life, continuously holding between 50 and 70 percent of the seats together. No single group has ever held a majority in Parliament.[51]

Groups are often based around a single European political party such as the socialist group. However they can, like the liberal group, include more than one European party as well as national parties and independents.[52]

My God! The complexity!

Or not.

But the point is that when he goes on to argue that…

After the Lisbon setback, a number of political voices suggested that the operation of the EU should be made “simpler” and more relevant to people’s lives. A good way to start would be to eliminate this costly, pompous, unworkable and unfathomable 22-language Tower of Babel, which begins its monthly session in Strasbourg this evening.

…he has done nothing in the preceding paragraphs to indicate why it is either ‘costly’, ‘unworkable’ or indeed ‘unfathomable’ (and the charge of ‘pompous’ is particularly entertaining). All these charges may well be correct, to greater or lesser extent. Costly certainly comes to mind in relation to the location(s) of the Parliament. But we don’t learn here how. What we know is that the parties come from different states… 27 of them. They align into 7 groups. Is this beyond comprehension? Is this in some sense a crime against nature? Is this radically different to our own Dáil and Seanad where there are - count ‘em - 6 different political parties (down 1 from 2002-07) and a fair number of Independents?

All very odd.

It’s sort of like a polemic without a heart. Or purpose. Or any supporting referenced material to sustain it.

And one has to ask, particularly when there are genuine questions as to the role and function of the Parliament, when he then continues…

Despite direct elections, the reality is that dangerously few Irish people - even party political activists - seem to know much about, or understand, how the European Parliament works.

… it might be fair to ask just how clear is his own understanding of the institution.

For a more thoughtful analysis, although one I’d not entirely agree with, consider by contrast that of Tony Kinsella in the same edition who notes that:

The European Parliament is unique in that it is directly elected by the citizens of the 27 member states, but it remains the junior EU institution.

Real power in the EU is held by the council of national ministers and its twice-removed democratic mandate.

We could of course decide that the parliament should become the central European institution, but that would involve removing considerable power from national governments, and therein lies the rub.

There it does, and no mistake. Kinsella proposes that:

If, as seems likely, the nation state model is reaching the end of its central existence, rather as duchies, baronies and provincial kingdoms once did, we will probably develop more directly mandated international structures. As we do so, the strength of national institutions is likely to wane, and local governments will be the other major beneficiary.

I’m not entirely sure that the nation state is quite there yet. It seems to me that it will remain the theatre for political activity well into the future. Kinsella argues that the corollary of his thoughts are that:

If we mandate international authorities to tackle global challenges, we will need to balance that by strengthening the role and power of our local and regional bodies.

Again, I’m not so sure he is correct. It sounds convincing, but two problems arise. Firstly national states, however much they pool sovereignty (as in the EU, or indeed under the GFA) tend to fairly jealously guard the power they have accrued and to retain the capacity to reappropriate that which they have ceded. And Kinsella recognises this:

Transferring sovereignty upwards is obviously sensitive. The fact that we are the first generation that has had to democratically address this means, somewhat awkwardly, that we have only ourselves to turn to for guidance.

To which one can only add that transferring sovereignty downwards is equally sensitive. The distinction between region and nation is generally distinct - at least in the minds of the nation states within which they are extant. The limitations on regional governments, as they currently exist, clearly defined as regards their relationship with central/federal governments.

Kinsella is absolutely correct in his analysis that…

Sovereignty flows from us, the people. We have long understood that it is in our common interest to pool our individual sovereignties into collective bodies, local authorities, national governments and, more recently, into international structures.

That sovereign power is ours to pool and delegate as we see fit. A local authority, or a nation state, draws its fundamental validity from our consent, from our votes - not from its statutes, by-laws or constitution.

Those are merely the instruments that structure our individual transfers of sovereignty, and hold no sovereignty in their own right.

But, this latter conclusion is, to my mind, only true in part. But as important is the sense, as much as the reality, of legitimacy. It’s a trope so often recounted that it’s lost nearly all power that ‘distance’ has been a problem for the EU. And this distance is both geographic and political. It is the sense that Brussels is out of sight that lends a certain credibility to charges of elitism. In part it is the scale of the distance that is most important. For example, even in a state as small as the Republic of Ireland the distance between central government in Dublin and regions is both collapsed and exaggerated in ‘myths’ about Dublin and elites (most entertaining recently on Politics.ie was to read about the ‘elites’ in the Dáil - the term being used in a sub-Sun like manner rather than in a serious critical political analysis). In a state like the United Kingdom which is comprised of nations this is amplified to some extent although the binding mythic constructs of that same “United” kingdom and/or Britishness help ameliorate this by presenting a competing ‘national’ identity - backed up by an history of force of arms. And consider too the North. Northern Ireland is, we can already see, developing (or further evolving) an identity distinct from both the South and the United Kingdom.

Without leaning on Anderson or Hobsbawm too much it is clear that state legitimations, usually underpinned by one form or another of ‘nation’, provide a near-essential glue that is necessary to construct valid polities. It seems to me unlikely that a European ‘national’ identity can emerge in the medium term, or perhaps even longer. I doubt that regional identities will be sufficiently elastic to replace national ones and therefore we are left, ultimately, with nation states as both legitimating and legitimised agents of popular socio-political expression.

Which, oddly, dovetails with Kinsella…

In the meantime, we will have to muddle along with our current transient, and therefore messy, mixture of local, national and international bodies.

Very possibly. But… one could ask how is that different in any respect to the situation since the first emergence of modern nation states?

In a way the intriguing aspect of this is that since that emergence the demos has expanded both in terms of representation of those within a polity and also in terms of the depth of that representation (and no, clearly nowhere near enough). But in doing so it has delegitimised projects which are not readily connected to it. In other words the EU - in part because the ‘democratic’ element is relatively weak - appears undemocratic, although the inter-governmental aspect is in itself a process used to protect individual polities for better and worse reasons.

That contradiction is at the heart of many of the troubles we see today. It is central to the EU. I’m not as optimistic as Kinsella that it can be ‘fixed’ any time soon.

From the recent Hot Press interview by Jason O’Toole with ‘celebrity’ solicitor Gerald Kean:

Q: What type of clients do you handle?

GK: I have 50-odd Premiership footballers and 30 international bands or artists. I don’t want to mention any names of my clients because it would be wrong, but it would be well known that I’m very close to people like Alan Shearer, Peter Reid, Gordon Strachan, Norman Whiteside and Paul McGrath…

… but the strength of the practice is not about that - it’s about people. It’s a people practice.

Q: How did you get so many celebrity clients?

G.K: Again, I got lucky. I met Jim Kerr ['nuff said] and became very good friends with him, and then from him Andy McCluskey of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and then I met Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran… I think it’s unfair of the likes of the Mail saying “Self-styled Celebrity Solicitor”. I have regularly contacted the media and said I’m not self-styled and I’ve asked for it not to be used- because ‘celebrity solicitor’ damages my business in that the amount of people that say to me, “God Gerald, I can’t believe you’re so nice”…

…People who know me know that I’m exceptionally honest. If you ask me to send out a letter tomorrow and I forget t do it and the day after you ask me “How’s it going?” I will say, “Jesus! Jason, forgot to send it out.”

I have advised some very high profile clients that got into some difficult situations to admit that you made a mistake. … Years and years before young Jason was working with Hot Press, people would say “Watch Gerry Kean - he’ll be in the Tribunals and tax scams!” I have never set up foreign companies. I have no offshore accounts. I had one offshore account 25 years ago. There’s no offshore accounts. There’s nothing there.

Q: How did you first become a public figure?

GK: I remember many years ago - when you were still a kid in primary school - going to a function with Simon Le Bon and one of the papers at the time - the Sunday Press - asked for a photo of myself and ex-wife Clodagh [reputedly the recipient of a €5m jet for her fortieth birthday] and Simon, and we pulled out of the picture and then the paper said: “Who does Gerald Kean think he is? He wouldn’t get in for a photograph?”, so I said, “I’ll go for the photograph the next time”. So I sort of felt I couldn’t win…

I didn’t go to the funeral [of Katy French] because I was afraid of the newspapers, such as the Mail, saying “Here’s Gerald Kean and Lisa Murphy turning up at the funeral of somebody for the sake of some publicity stunt”.

Q: There were some critica comments made about your recent birthday party, which was certainly extravagant.

G.K: I couldn’t get over the press coverage for something like that… I had to laugh at papers like the Mail going into why I picked - was it King Louis the XIV? Well I didn’t know what I picked! … I didn’t want to have a black tie event - boring! I didn’t want a fancy dress because I didn’t like people coming in Robin Hood rigouts. I wanted to do something different. Then I had this vision, which worked out. It was as good a night as you ever had. We had horses and carriages bringing in the guests and we had choirs calling out their names as they arrived. We had Belinda Carlisle, ABC, Alsan, Lloy Cole and the Commotions, Ronan Keating. And everyone was dressed up and all the girls who were thinking about a boob job decided that it wasn’t necessary because they have these corsets - they were just chuffed with their breasts! All the lads were going around with their wigs, saying “Jesus, I look quite good in a wig!” It wasn’t meant to be serious…

It’s serious alright.

lcr

Here’s a document - which may well be “From Long Kesh to a Socialist Ireland” (unfortunately it isn’t complete - lacking both a cover and back page(s) ) issued by the League of Communist Republicans in or around 1988. The LCR was an interesting group, a split from the Provisional IRA in the 1980s. For a detailed history of the LCR Fourthwrite has a piece by Liam O’Ruairc on it.

The basic overview, largely drawn from the Fourthwrite article [available here as a pdf], is as follows.

With the end of abstention by Sinn Féin at the 1986 Ard Fhéis there was a mass resignation of about 100 IRA prisoners in Long Kesh. Of this number a smaller group combined in November 1986 as the League of Communist Republicans. Their position was interesting since they argued that the armed campaign was of limited use at that point in time (and who better to know?) and that Sinn Féin was retreating from the left.

One of those pivotal to the LCR was Tommy McKearney who developed their programme (reproduced, not quite in full due to missing pages, in the last pages of the PDF above):

WE STAND FOR:
1. An independent Sovereign Republic of All Ireland.
2. A Revolutionary Democratic Government, under the control of the Workers
and the Small Farmers.
3. Administration of the State to be under the supervision of a National
Assembly which practices Direct Participatory Democracy, ie deputies are
subject to recall.

THE STATE MUST GUARANTEE ITS CITIZENS:

• Work at an acceptable wage.
• A home suitable to the citizen’s needs.
• An education to the highest level compatible with the citizen’s ability.
• Full and comprehensive healthcare.
• Social Rights including:

Divorce
Contraception and abortion
Separation of Church and State
Meaningful equality between the sexes.

To allow the Workers’ and Small Farmers’ State exercise control, it is imperative
that the commanding heights of the economy, Finance, Trade, Industry,
Production and Communication, be brought under the Democratic control of
the Revolutionary Democratic Workers’ and Small Farmers’ Republic.

As can be seen this had deliberate resonances with the 1934 Republican Congress. Their slogan ‘A Workers’ and Small Farmers’ State’ was an attempt to remedy what they saw as the original error by Ryan and others at that Congress. And as a further echo of this their journal was named Congress ‘86.

Liam O’Ruairc argues in the Fourthwrite piece that:

Unlike the later split with the 32-County Sovereignty Movement, the LCR split
was not well publicised. Apart from some obscure journals of tiny Marxist
organisations, the media didn’t pay any attention to the formation of the League
of Communist Republicans. That might have been justified if one thought that
the LCR was just a tiny group without influence outside the prisons. However,
looking back fifteen years later, the formation of the LCR is a fact of far greater
significance. What is significant is that a group of Republican prisoners thought
that it was impossible to reform the Republican movement from within, and that
it was necessary to break away from it and form a new organisation. In 1986,
many of the prisoners (and we are not even talking here of people outside the
jails) who were for one reason or another critical of the direction Adams was
taking the organisation in, believed that it was still possible to change the
Provisional Republican movement from within. “The course of time has fallen
on the side of those who argued that there was no internal means of changing
the Republican Movement.

And there is much in that analysis. However, it also points to the paradoxical marginalisation of the armed struggle and those at the hard end by political processes outside the prisons which were encompassing much greater numbers. Without a party organisation to organise around, and the LCR was not a party, it was difficult if not near impossible to mobilise. Where the LCR did attempt to do so it was constrained by it’s larger rival.

A couple of oddities about the LCR can be pointed to. Their critique of the then campaign was quite pointed, and although not coming from a pacifist direction, it implicitly suggested that armed struggle was futile in the then existing conditions.

…for the LCR, “the limitations of legality have never really been tested.
” More significantly, the current campaign “does not enjoy broad, popular active
support”. Although there is evidence for some mass participation and support
(safe houses, duration of struggle, people on marches, etc.) the fact that
seventy per cent of the nation is apathetic to the IRA campaign, there is
effectively no mass participation. And thirdly, the IRA campaign (in the late
1980s) was stuck in a stalemate. For the LCR, the IRA campaign was not a
people’s war like in Vietnam or Nicaragua, but was essentially a matter of
“propaganda by the deed” more reminiscent of the individual acts of terrorism
of anarchists.

Note the rhetoric about ‘people’s’ war. The LCR was moving in an odd direction as regards their motivations for splitting from the IRA. Because while they eschewed a parliamentary road to socialism they ‘agreed with tactical interventions’.

But in the Irish context, this could only be done in the South. “This means that
the responsibility for making a tactical intervention in parliaments must be kept
open. Reality dictates that this can only be done successfully in Leinster House.
It is there that a pragmatic intervention stands the best chance of destabilising
the establishment. No such option exists in Westminster. Under present
circumstances, and for the foreseeable future, attendance at the British House
of Commons would serve no purpose other than to validate the British imperial
claim to sovereignty over Ireland.”

And added to this was an identification with the Soviet Union and the concept of a ‘vanguard’ party which would take a leading role in a reformulated Republican Congress/broad front strategy.

And yet, a further problem for the LCR was that they sought to mark out political territory that was already well covered. They had discussions with the CPI which in its Marxist orthodoxy was in some respects obviously complementary to their approach. The Workers’ Party, while jettisoning the nationalist element of Republicanism, were forging ahead politically in the South on a programme with not entirely dissimilar roots (indeed to me it is striking just how pronounced and similar the social liberalism of the LCR was as expressed in their programme). And yet they could not join one - in part due to the need to justify their previous positions, and clearly would not join the other for historical and ideological reasons (indeed a reference in the text to Sinn Féin in 1986 suggests that they (the Marxists of the LCR) should they remain within it ‘…at best could hope for a pale version of the Workers’ Party…’.

Any further material from the LCR would be very much appreciated.