Ireland will never be a democratic country.

yoshytoshy

The thread title suggests that I'm on the troll ,but that's not what this post is about.

After having a discussion with a lad I work with and with several people ,who's homes we worked in. They all seem to agree that Ireland as a country seems to pat each other on the back ,when it comes to getting one up on someone.

This mentality is not democratic and might explain why we got ourselves into our mess .It's made sense whenever brought up in conversation with us ,
Is this what we amount to as a country ?

Time Magazine

yoshytoshy wrote: »

This mentality is not democratic

That does not mean we're not a democracy.

We have a free press, legitimate elections and leaders that are ultimately accountable to our will. As bad as the current situation is nobody could deny that we are one of the finest democracies in the world, and we shouldn't forget it.

yoshytoshy

I didn't get across what I was talking about properly in my first post ,I'm not slating our country at all.

The words that were brought up were ,true democracy as opposed to what we have in the public psyche that is ,it's ok to be on the dole and work etc.
There does seem to be a "fair play to ye" ,attitude towards people getting the upper hand here ,when it comes to the government etc.

anonymous_joe

yoshytoshy wrote: »

I didn't get across what I was talking about properly in my first post ,I'm not slating our country at all.

The words that were brought up were ,true democracy as opposed to what we have in the public psyche that is ,it's ok to be on the dole and work etc.
There does seem to be a "fair play to ye" ,attitude towards people getting the upper hand here ,when it comes to the government etc.

Is there any democracy anywhere in the world different to that?

nesf

yoshytoshy wrote: »

The words that were brought up were ,true democracy as opposed to what we have in the public psyche that is ,it's ok to be on the dole and work etc.
There does seem to be a "fair play to ye" ,attitude towards people getting the upper hand here ,when it comes to the government etc.

See, that's not really got anything to do with democracy. There's nothing undemocratic about the public thinking it's ok to be on the dole and work. I disagree fundamentally with the thinking but it doesn't have anything to with democracy or the lack thereof.

OS119

i dunno, if the OP is trying to say what i think he's trying to say, then actually i think he's right.

its an attitude within all social classes - including the political class - that if you can enrich yourself by disregarding/evading/working around the law (the fundamental building block of democratic states) without getting caught/convicted then good on you. the current political broohahaa over travel expenses and backhanders is, imv, only an issue because the state finances are in the shitter (indeed J O'D looks like he'll keep his seat, his constituants couldn't give a shit). the public is quite happy to continue voting for politicians who subvert their own laws for financial gain - and politicians subverting the law is fundamentally undemocratic.

it has direct parallells with organised crime: many people are happy to do nothing when a organised crime gang takes over in a area - protection rackets, extortion, drug-dealing, prostitution etc... as long as there's enough knocked off DVD's and cheap fags on the market and the occasional street mugger gets his head kicked in for robbing the wrong person. never mind that the presence of the OC gang destroys the area, poisons the youth - both litterally and in terms of ambition - and means no employer will touch the place.

so yes Ireland is democratic in that the electorate chooses the government, but moodern democracy is about far more than mob rule - and that i think is where the idea of Irish democracy starts to hit problems.

getz

Time Magazine wrote: »

That does not mean we're not a democracy.

We have a free press, legitimate elections and leaders that are ultimately accountable to our will. As bad as the current situation is nobody could deny that we are one of the finest democracies in the world, and we show forget it.

how can you say that ? ireland is still under the control of the roman church,education/health/welfare .even as late as 2001,irish ministers rushed through a law that gave the church immunity from paying compansation to child victims [ahern ensured irish taxpayer would pick up the tab,running into tens of millions for the churches crimes],unlike catholic france,irish schools still have religious symbols in classrooms ,even tolling of the angelous bell,still rings out on irish public TV,no ireland is only as free as the church of rome lets it , the newish blasphemy law has only been introduced to protect them from being publicly attacked. no ireland isnot yet fully a democratic country

yoshytoshy

OS119 wrote: »

i dunno, if the OP is trying to say what i think he's trying to say, then actually i think he's right.

its an attitude within all social classes - including the political class - that if you can enrich yourself by disregarding/evading/working around the law (the fundamental building block of democratic states) without getting caught/convicted then good on you. the current political broohahaa over travel expenses and backhanders is, imv, only an issue because the state finances are in the shitter (indeed J O'D looks like he'll keep his seat, his constituants couldn't give a shit). the public is quite happy to continue voting for politicians who subvert their own laws for financial gain - and politicians subverting the law is fundamentally undemocratic.

it has direct parallells with organised crime: many people are happy to do nothing when a organised crime gang takes over in a area - protection rackets, extortion, drug-dealing, prostitution etc... as long as there's enough knocked off DVD's and cheap fags on the market and the occasional street mugger gets his head kicked in for robbing the wrong person. never mind that the presence of the OC gang destroys the area, poisons the youth - both litterally and in terms of ambition - and means no employer will touch the place.

so yes Ireland is democratic in that the electorate chooses the government, but moodern democracy is about far more than mob rule - and that i think is where the idea of Irish democracy starts to hit problems.

Thats exactly what I was getting at ,Thanks:).

Maybe it's down to our political history with England ,it wasn't my thoughts originally ,but a bloke I work with.
Thought it was interesting though and considering our dilemna at the moment ,maybe we will never know who to vote for

diverdriver

There is something fundamentally undemocratic in Ireland, you're right. It's hard to put a finger on it. But think about Fianna Fail, consistently re-elected time after time even though many if not most people in Ireland despise or dislike them. Why are they re-elected when everyone knows they're corrupt and power hungry? Well the same reason Bertie Ahern saw nothing wrong with taking lots of money from his 'friends'. The same reason John O'Donohue is grievously offended that he had to resign because of luxury lifestyles on expenses. The same reason Charlie Haughey took and took and took yet remains popular. It's the sense of entitlement to perks and privilege. FF will look after you, just you and damm the rest of them.

It's subtle things too, like littering and petty vandalism. You simply cannot leave anything around without someone damaging it or stealing it. For example when is the last time you saw someone park a motorcycle on the street outside their house overnight in Ireland? Go to England or elsewhere not only will it be parked on the street but will have cover on it. You never see a car either with a cover on it in the street here. Why? Because someone will simply rip it off and take it away jsut because they can. The bike will last as long as someone with a Transit can arrive and toss it in the back. The same goes for lifebelts, anything that can be stolen or damaged always is.

Maybe it's down to our political history with England

It's not, that's an excuse I've heard over the years. 'Our anti establishment attitude comes from our rebellious attitude to the British'. It's a unique way of blaming the Brits for our own stupidity. No one under the age of 90 has had any experience with the English as our lords an masters. It's down to us entirely.

We are an immature country. We never had to grow up. So we still act like some kind of tribal place with competing factions all in it for themselves. As if we needed proof look at our current economic crisis? All kinds of groups demanding they be looked after when it comes to pay cuts and funding cuts. Patriotism, we don't know the meaning of the word. No one cares about Ireland or the Irish people. We only care about ourselves. It's probably the reason we took so long to get independance. We could never unite under any flag.

yoshytoshy

diverdriver wrote: »

It's not, that's an excuse I've heard over the years. 'Our anti establishment attitude comes from our rebellious attitude to the British'. It's a unique way of blaming the Brits for our own stupidity. No one under the age of 90 has had any experience with the English as our lords an masters. It's down to us entirely.

We are an immature country. We never had to grow up. So we still act like some kind of tribal place with competing factions all in it for themselves. As if we needed proof look at our current economic crisis? All kinds of groups demanding they be looked after when it comes to pay cuts and funding cuts. Patriotism, we don't know the meaning of the word. No one cares about Ireland or the Irish people. We only care about ourselves. It's probably the reason we took so long to get independance. We could never unite under any flag.

It's very hard to ignore our history though ,we speak english after all and have a lot of trade with the country.
We are definetly not as mature of a country as a lot of european's , maybe in time we will sort things out. A good dry spell will weed out the sheisters:o

AlekSmart

It's subtle things too, like littering and petty vandalism. You simply cannot leave anything around without someone damaging it or stealing it. For example when is the last time you saw someone park a motorcycle on the street outside their house overnight in Ireland? Go to England or elsewhere not only will it be parked on the street but will have cover on it. You never see a car either with a cover on it in the street here. Why? Because someone will simply rip it off and take it away jsut because they can. The bike will last as long as someone with a Transit can arrive and toss it in the back. The same goes for lifebelts, anything that can be stolen or damaged always is.

Interesting that we even regard these things as somewhat lesser evils....."subtle".
There`s little subtle about the way modern Ireland behaves itself.

I`m coming around to the Catholicism connection as a form of explanation....(NOT excusation !).

Take,for example the recent Zoe Developments cases in the higher courts.
Here we saw one of the largest Property Development companies in the State resorting to some of the most incredible legal tricks in the book to stave off a foreign Banks efforts to get its own money back.

It`s no coincidence in my mind that the Bank concerned ACC is now owned by a DUTCH parent.

Is there a correlation between that essentially Protestant background and the desire to get things right financially,whilst the Zoe people relied on a mixture of Fable,Slapstick and wonky arithmetic to defend their thoroughly indefinsible position ?

We as a CULTURE have a remarkable propensity for excusing thge most mindless of anti-social thickwittery and seeking to avoid any form of responsibility or punishment..Put even simpler...If Bernard Madoff had located his operation in Dublins IFSC rather than on Wall St he would be tee,ing off as I type,probably a four-ball with our own Seanie Fitz...

dresden8

yoshytoshy wrote: »

A good dry spell will weed out the sheisters:o

Nope, a good dry spell will only encourage them.

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/the-black-economy--is-back-in-business-1917172.html

This is exactly what happened in the 80's.

For another interesting parallel

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2009/09/13/story44268.asp

The 80's are also when FF's and FG's blatant corruption took off.

It's going to get worse before it gets better.

Boskowski

Whats democracy anyway?

We have a democracy in a sense that we have equality, we elected our representatives and they are technically accountable to us, we have separation of powers and all that, all the states power comes from the people etcpp. We have all the boxes of democracy ticked, technically.

But I think the way western, modern democracies or maybe all democracies work out is not the same as peoples perception of what it should be like. Whether that's a failure of the system or just a big misunderstanding I don't know. But what (our) democracy certainly is not is that we have a system that brings the best people into office, that these people truly represent the will of the people who elected them and that their main aim is the common good.

What we do get into office is the folks who are efficient at scheming their way into power, people successful at playing 'the game', people advancing the agendas of people who got them into power (and I don't mean by voting for them) and fostering the prosperity of a few just so that they strike the balance between 'happy days' for themselves and their lobby and possibly get re-elected. That's not an Irish problem. It's the same everywhere. In some places more so than in others, but basically everywhere...

The underlying problem - regardless of what political system we're talking about - is that profit and gain are the main drivers. Not the common good, not prudence, not the welfare of us all.

Boskowski

diverdriver wrote: »

It's subtle things too, like littering and petty vandalism. You simply cannot leave anything around without someone damaging it or stealing it. For example when is the last time you saw someone park a motorcycle on the street outside their house overnight in Ireland? Go to England or elsewhere not only will it be parked on the street but will have cover on it. You never see a car either with a cover on it in the street here. Why? Because someone will simply rip it off and take it away jsut because they can. The bike will last as long as someone with a Transit can arrive and toss it in the back. The same goes for lifebelts, anything that can be stolen or damaged always is.

Ye that always struck me as odd. Whats with that eh? I mean where I'm from people vandalize. It does happen. But here it's a certainty. Like the glass pane at the bus shelter for instance. The moment its replaced it will be smashed in again. Stuff like that. Wtf?

SLUSK

yoshytoshy wrote: »

The thread title suggests that I'm on the troll ,but that's not what this post is about.

After having a discussion with a lad I work with and with several people ,who's homes we worked in. They all seem to agree that Ireland as a country seems to pat each other on the back ,when it comes to getting one up on someone.

This mentality is not democratic and might explain why we got ourselves into our mess .It's made sense whenever brought up in conversation with us ,
Is this what we amount to as a country ?

Blasphemy laws, abortion laws. Until 1993 homosexuality was illegal. It might be an exaggeration to call Ireland a theocracy but it is not far from the truth.

Time Magazine

SLUSK wrote: »

Blasphemy laws, abortion laws. Until 1993 homosexuality was illegal. It might be an exaggeration to call Ireland a theocracy but it is not far from the truth.

A society that wants a theocratic state where blasphemy and abortion are dealt with by the constitution can still be democratic.

You could have a libertarian dictatorship that had no blasphemy or abortion laws, but it would be far less democratic than Ireland.

Neil3030

I think what we're really talking about here is not whether Ireland will ever be democratic (because it is), rather, whether the Irish people will ever truly appreciate the democratic values the country offers its citizenry.

TheCandystripes

Irish people need to grow up. We have no exuse, we are a homegenous country but countries like Switzerland which have such great diversity have a much more common sense of self. Hard to describe but yeah its a joke.

Sand

People often use liberalism and democracy interchangeably, or use democratic where they mean liberal.

Ireland is democratic because the government is ultimately accountable to the people. Athenians, a slave owning and imperialist state invented democracy. It was a perfect democracy, indeed many wish to regress back to it: A city population, voting on any or all issues that affected it unbound by any anti-democratic checks. Sounds wonderful doesnt it?

Ireland is of ... debateable liberal status. While it would be wrong to say Ireland is illiberal in comparison to places like...Iran, lets face it: Irelands laws on blasphemy, official languages and so on are not liberal. I wouldnt actually include abortion as being illiberal - its arguable that the foetus has a right to life from the moment of conception. I dont hold to that myself, but its arguable - hence defence of that basic right for all believed to hold it is anything but illiberal.

What the OP is referring to is a lack of civic patriotism: In general, we dont identify with the state. We dont see it being run in our interests. We see John O Donoghue and his expenses binge. We see "Im alright" Jack O Connor and David Begg greedily sucking us dry like parasitic vampires. We see hordes of special interest groups like the unholy alliance behind NAMA driving policy. We cant trust our politicians to hold to a policy or idealogy because the majority of them dont have one.

Hence, the social contract between citizen and state (State serves citizen, citizen provides reasonable tax to fund state) breaks down. Irish people slap tax dodger on the back because...lets face it, it would only go to fund NAMA or to pay for Cowens junkets anyway, or a pay rise for David Begg and Co. Theres no civic patriotism, because our state doesnt inspire it. This isnt a "post-colonial" hangover, not after 90 years.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Erm this is completely human. Happens everywhere, certainly not an Irish thing.

diverdriver

Rather a unique thread, no one really disagreeing vehemtly. Maybe the OP struck a chord? Some good points made too. Realcam's contribution, I think puts it well. Alek Smart was right on the ball too.

Bottle of smoke, you're right, it's not unique to Ireland but it is characteristic of Ireland.

It would take someone with a bit more intelligence and ability to express himself than me to put it elouquently. But I'll try.

I think to sum it up, we lack patriotism and civic pride. Despite lip service to the idea. Few Irish people are properly patriotic. Oh sure we have 'nationalists' and 'republicans'. But they are what I refer to as 'negative patriots'. Negative patriots express the patriotism through anti British and lately anti foreigner sentiments.

If you look back on our history since independance, when we became 'free'. We weren't free at all. We were immediately oppressed by our elected government in concert with the church and all the panopoly of the state. You either played the game their way or you suffered. Not that anyone was shot or locked up for failing to toe the line. It was far more subtle than that.

Everything was effectively forced on you. The Irish language is one example. How in God's name after all these years, most of us still cannot speak Irish well and even maintain an active hostility to the language? Why because it was forced on us as a school subject rather than as a living language. Sex, younger people probably find it hard to believe just how oppressive the attitude to sex was right up the eighties and beyond.

We've also had no real heroes to inspire us for a long time. Nobody the equivalent of Churchill or Roosevelt or Kennedy. The closest we ever came to colourful was Haughey, even then everyone knew he was on take when he was in power. Which neatly illustrates the 'me fein' attitude. But then no one joins FF to do their best for the people of this country. They join because they know they will advance themselves in terms of power and prestige and most importanlty financially.

We have sporting heroes but the GAA is another example of tribalism. Far from uniting the country it divides. it's attitude to other sports for example. We make a big deal about using Croke Park for Soccer and Rugby. To a foreigner it must be incomprehensible. But I feel the GAA overall damages our ability to compete effectively abroad in other sports because it drains the sporting talent of towns and villages all over Ireland and pulls them into a strictly domestic sport almost unknown outside Ireland. Not only that it encourages a them and us attitude. I'm not saying the GAA does than on purpose but the consequence of their success is our general failure to compete effectively in virtually any sport you can name. People slag off the Soccer team for it's tendency to recruit English born players. Well the reason is that many Irish born potential Roy Keanes play Gaelic instead.

There are numerous examples. Sufficient to say that our society is structured to generate citizens who care nothing for their country not least because of what they see around them. Petty vandalism and crime, anti social behaviour, littering. We have no pride in our institutions, our political system, many but not all in our public service seemed to have missed the very term 'public service'. The defence forces in contrast to many countries is considered a bit of a joke.

We are in the worst recession we ever faced, apparently but calls for national unity and working together go unheeded in the fighting over selfish interests. Now in truth, in many cases 'national unity' is a myth fostered to at least get some people to see the bigger picture. But we don't even pretend to be united. I grew up and lived in and around Dublin most of my life. It was only when I moved out that I realised how big a deal it was for people other counties to identify themselves as Cork or Galway or whatever. I'm like 'whatever' when they try to slag me for example, if the Dublin team loses. I pass back an forth over county borders and they all look the same. As a pilot when you look down, this is a very small island. Recently I could see Galway to North, Athlone to the East, Kerry to the South etc. There really is no difference from up there. Down on the ground, it's all different.

It's ironic that many people espouse the cause of a 'United Ireland'. Maybe we should be more united first.

Lame Lantern

Ireland's eccentric position on the liberalisation continuum is not cause for declaring it undemocratic. This is a strategy that will only make progressive people look stupid. It's easy to call the whole system corrupt or launch into weird, anthropological attacks on the "Irish people" as a whole (which seem to be popular around here) instead of actually engaging with what is, fundamentally, a democratic system that favours plural opinion, in which groups and invidividuals can make far more noise than in other countries.

Whining about the political scene in the UK or the US would make some sense. Dropping out of the system here and then complaining about it (or complaining about everyone-else-but-me) is lazy and uninformed.

OS119

diverdriver wrote: »

...The defence forces in contrast to many countries is considered a bit of a joke...

this is quite interesting - i do wonder whether the disinterest in foriegn affairs/policy and the DF ('our place in the big wide world') is perhaps a symptom not of a deeply-held moralistic view, but a rather less edifying idea that Ireland isn't a 'collective' society, and therefore doesn't have a 'collective' view/position to put forward - that perhaps Ireland doesn't have interests to advance and protect, rather that the universe is revolves entirely around a class/occupation/regional/county/language/cultural fight over shares in the pie.

i've not been able to put that quite how the thought came to me, but i'm trying (failing?) to say 'how can a society have corporate interests/actions when the society isn't corperate?' hence the lack of interest in what happens outside the pie that everyone is fighting over...

it still doesn't sound right...

dan_d

Maybe democracy is the wrong word to use.We certainly elect our own Government but that's about as far as it goes. There is without a doubt an attitude of trying to get one up on others, particularly with regard to the law, and patting ourselves on the back for it.
It's more to do with the fact that relative to many European countries we are a very young democracy. We have not ruled ourselves for a century yet, whereas most of the major European countries have ruled themselves for centuries (admittedly some on and off, but their own rule was always there). The church ruled the country following that - for what reasons I don't know, it just seems to have happened that way. To make things worse we made a huge amount of money very early on in our independence (well - 1990s. Early, again, relative to the rest of Europe) and we had no idea what to do with it. We still have the mentality of watching what the neighbours are doing, watching what the people in the next town are doing, watching those in the next county, in the other provinces. Parochial, I believe was a word used recently in relation to our politicians' understanding of the Lisbon Treaty........there's an element of truth in that, no matter what we may think.
Now it does not excuse our behaviour - we really need to grow up - but it's going to take a few generations to get over this. I wouldn't be holding my breath about seeing it in our lifetime.

Sand

I dont agree its a matter of time - we might go on another 1000 years and still have a government/establishment ( I include all the "insiders" in the state here) that is entirely self interested, with little more than populist or gesture politics to cement its hold on power.

Our political system is deeply sick, and produces a deeply sick result where cartels are invited to govern the country in "public partner" talks, and where supposed men of the people like David Begg are on the boards of the Central Bank, trustees of the Irish Times and who knows how many other emblems of the establishment...fighting for the rights of the super rich public sector workers ( medical consultants, civil servants, quango chiefs and higher ups...all on 6 figure salaries for **** knows what).

Essentially, the problem of a lack of civic patriotism on the part of the Irish public is that we see the state/establishment for what it is - an ugly parasite on the back of the Irish taxpayer. In a perfect world, the catalyst for change would be bottom up - a sudden wave of "Yes we can!" overwhelming the paraochial one up man ship, but in reality if the state/establishment wants legitmacy in the eyes of the Irish people then theyre going to have to meet the Irish people half way.

Fine Gaels proposal to put the Senate to a referendum is a necessary first step, but only the very start of what will need to be an overhaul of the Irish state.