The Garda Síochána will succeed, not by force of arms or numbers, but by their moral authority as servants of the people. Michael Joseph Staines, First Garda Commissioner (1885-1955) The above statement is, in my opinion, a good founding principle for any Police Service in a free democracy. What is meant by “moral authority”? Merriam … Read more
Imagine if you will, a government that nobody actually voted for. A government with no opposition that legislates at the behest of a committee of unelected civil servants. A government that took over from a “caretaker” administration that had been voted out of office nearly five months previously, yet still held full executive powers and … Read more
So-called ‘ZeroCovid’ is a ‘zero-tolerance’ approach to the virus, promising to eliminate community transmission in Ireland. The concept has gained traction among young people, especially, desperate for an end to a seemingly endless cycle of lockdowns, and others worried by the danger posed by the disease itself. The original ‘zero-tolerance’ policy is identified with Donald … Read more
The Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes has unleased another wave of soul-searching in Ireland. How could a society claiming to be ‘Christian’ have failed to protect, and even to have harmed, its most vulnerable – unmarried mothers and their ‘illegitimate’ children? The harrowing accounts fit within a wider … Read more
The palpable relief being felt by many over the accelerating approvals of apparently safe and efficient Covid-19 vaccines is hardly surprising. But away from triumphalist headlines, partially satiric messages have circulated widely on social media essentially stating: “I can’t wait for a new vaccine to come out so I can refuse it.” These are easy … Read more
“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it,” Lindsey Graham, May 3, 2016 With the world looking on, on Wednesday January 6th President Trump incited his followers to storm the U.S. Congress in order to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election. An election which he lost by millions … Read more
The idea that our society might be moving in a fundamentally bad direction is an extremely difficult one to grapple with. We are aware that society is deeply flawed, sometimes even to the point of cynicism; and yet there is a certain basic soundness in the orientation of our society which we assume as a … Read more
On April 28th Fintan O’Toole brought a telling revelation to light in an article entitled, ‘Government ditched its own plan during this crisis’. He claimed that ‘Within the nexus of experts engaged in the management of the crisis, there are increasing concerns about the systems part of the operation’ He then revealed that: the Government … Read more
In Plato’s dialogue ‘Cratylus,’ Socrates and his friends Cratylus and Hermogenes discuss the issue of how phenomena are named. At the heart of the discussion lies the question of whether names have a natural relationship with the things they signify; or is this a random exercise, determined by custom, and are these names therefore mutable? … Read more
The death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg signals the death knell of the tradition of liberal American judges from William O’ Douglas, to the Irish-American William Brennan, and Harry Blackmun. In recent times we have had Stephens, and perhaps Souter, who went on a voyage of passage from conservatism to moderate liberalism. Such warning signs ripple … Read more