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Bobby Sands R.I.P. 5th May 1981

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  • #302
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,575 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    Happyman42 wrote: »
    Armed insurrection was the natural outcome of years of subjugation. In the real world it is always the 'natural' outcome eventually. It has happened everywhere in the world. It is not neccessarily wrong an generally takes place in an atmosphere of mistrust and broken promises and where suprise is the most important factor.

    Likewise it was inevitable that the subjugation of the American people by an overly powerful central government, which has significant human rights and civil liberties issues, was countered through people like Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh's options were limited, due to the fact that he was essentially working alone, but he made sure to target the administrative centre of the central government. He didn't seek to target civilians, and any that died (and there were many) were collateral damage; he said so himself.

    Many felt the US central government should never have been vested with such powers in the first place; a consequence of winning the Civil War. Once the government executed McVeigh he became a martyr. What's worse, they had the audacity to call him a criminal.
    Happyman42 wrote: »
    Why didn't the British turn the other cheek, withdraw and seek negotiations if 'violence should be' the 'last option'. They had as many options as oscar says the rebels had. (it's not for one minute my point of view, the British where always going to react as they did, this is the real world after all) I'm just applying oscarbravo's logic unilaterally to show how unrealistic it is in the real world here stuff happens.

    No, the rebels could have chosen to not take up arms in the first place. Not so much the rank-and-file, they were merely following orders. But what on Earth were the leaders playing at? The rebels were not about to negotiate anything whilst their position was tenable: once they had started the Rising it was reasonable enough for them to continue until the outcome was in no doubt. They behaved like soldiers; they fought like soldiers; they surrendered like soldiers; they were shot like solders. But they should never have fought in the first place.


  • #303
    Mr Cumulonimbus
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,463 ✭✭✭Mr Cumulonimbus


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    "Assume a spherical chicken of uniform density..."

    I'm not interested in playing rhetorical word games with the starting assumptions carefully chosen to set up a desired outcome. I'm rejecting your premises. If you can't argue for the legitimacy of armed insurrection without loaded premises, you've already fatally undermined your own argument.

    Evasive rubbish. So you'd rather your position on this remains unknown to me? Bizarre in the extreme.


  • #304
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,575 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    Mr Cumulonimbus wrote: »
    if peaceful negotiations have totally failed with absolutely no prospect of them starting again, does the population of an occupied country/colony etc have the right to use force to eject its occupier?

    Define fail.

    Also; did anybody really think WW1 was a permanent fixture? WW1 could be still be going on today, sure.

    The only negotiations that had failed were with Unionists.


  • #305
    Mr Cumulonimbus
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,463 ✭✭✭Mr Cumulonimbus


    RandomName2 wrote: »
    Define fail.

    Doesn't the question itself make it clear?


  • #306
    oscarBravo
    Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,850 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    OCorcrainn wrote: »
    You still have not answered my question...
    I don't answer rhetorical questions.
    Happyman42 wrote: »
    You asked us to give legitimacies for armed insurrection and when they are given, this is the best you can do? Retreat to the high moral ground?
    I'm not sure why you find moral high ground so repulsive that you seek to avoid it at all costs, but I'm simply pointing out that the justifications that are given for 1916 continue to be given today, and the best anyone seems to be able to offer by way of differentiation is "yeah but that's different".

    I've consistently stated that I don't believe that republican terrorism has ever been justifiable, whether at the foundation of the state or this week. I find that a more consistent position than cherry-picking which republican terrorism to approve of, but I guess that's just me having morals, which you don't seem to believe exist in the real world you keep preaching to me about.
    'Dissidents' 'terrorists' etc are monikers given perjoratively, they don't see themselves as acting in the wrong. Which makes your moral grandstanding moot, I'm afraid, as the real world will happen around you and your likes.
    So your sole moral standard by which you judge people is that they don't believe themselves to be acting in the wrong? There's nothing morally wrong with any action, as long as the actor believes it to be the right thing to do?

    Or is that a standard that you apply only to people who do things you agree with?
    Mr Cumulonimbus wrote: »
    Evasive rubbish. So you'd rather your position on this remains unknown to me? Bizarre in the extreme.
    Why is it bizarre that I'm refusing to be drawn on a hypothetical (and extremely unrealistic) question that you've asked purely as a rhetorical trap?


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  • #307
    oscarBravo
    Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,850 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    Mr Cumulonimbus wrote: »
    Doesn't the question itself make it clear?
    Of course not. How do you define "no prospect" of peaceful negotiations? Twenty years ago there was "no prospect" of a joint DUP/Sinn Fein government in Northern Ireland. Did that mean that it was never going to happen?


  • #308
    Happyman42
    Closed Accounts Posts: 18,066 ✭✭✭✭Happyman42


    RandomName2 wrote: »


    No, the rebels could have chosen to not take up arms in the first place.

    The 'rebels' believed the British shouldn't have been there in the 'first place'.
    Are you begining to see that adopting a 'moral' standpoint is ultimately pointless and useless to anybody other than yourself and those who have the same moral code?
    Nobody ever solved anything in Ireland from the high moral ground, it just doesn't cut it in a real world.


  • #309
    oscarBravo
    Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,850 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    Happyman42 wrote: »
    The 'rebels' believed the British shouldn't have been there in the 'first place'.
    You're glossing over a rather important point - a moral point, if you like - which is that disagreeing with something doesn't automatically give you the right to kill people to change it.
    Are you begining to see that adopting a 'moral' standpoint is ultimately pointless and useless to anybody other than yourself and those who have the same moral code?
    Nobody ever solved anything in Ireland from the high moral ground, it just doesn't cut it in a real world.
    That's because there are far too many people in this country with no interest in morality, and who feel they have every right to kill people to get their way.

    Why do you have such a problem with morals?


  • #310
    Happyman42
    Closed Accounts Posts: 18,066 ✭✭✭✭Happyman42


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    I don't answer rhetorical questions.

    I'm not sure why you find moral high ground so repulsive that you seek to avoid it at all costs, but I'm simply pointing out that the justifications that are given for 1916 continue to be given today, and the best anyone seems to be able to offer by way of differentiation is "yeah but that's different".

    I've consistently stated that I don't believe that republican terrorism has ever been justifiable, whether at the foundation of the state or this week. I find that a more consistent position than cherry-picking which republican terrorism to approve of, but I guess that's just me having morals, which you don't seem to believe exist in the real world you keep preaching to me about. So your sole moral standard by which you judge people is that they don't believe themselves to be acting in the wrong? There's nothing morally wrong with any action, as long as the actor believes it to be the right thing to do?

    Or is that a standard that you apply only to people who do things you agree with?

    No, what I am saying is, 'so what?' What difference does it make to anything what you or I think of something morally? The proverbial cows will be home and tucked up in bed if we take moral stances, there is no solution down that road.
    Terror, terrorism, force, military might, etc etc etc are all used by all people's, governments, militants etc etc etc to get what they want.


  • #311
    OCorcrainn
    Closed Accounts Posts: 428 ✭✭OCorcrainn


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    I don't answer rhetorical questions.

    My question was not rhetorical, you are deliberately misconstruing at as such because you do not wish to be perceived as a hypocrite.


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  • #312
    Mr Cumulonimbus
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,463 ✭✭✭Mr Cumulonimbus


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    rhetorical trap?

    Erm, no oscar. Your position continues to remain unknown to me.
    Of course not.

    In my opinion the question is clear, but you won't answer it.


  • #313
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,575 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    Mr Cumulonimbus wrote: »
    Doesn't the question itself make it clear?

    The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand?
    Happyman42 wrote: »
    The 'rebels' believed the British shouldn't have been there in the 'first place'.
    Are you begining to see that adopting a 'moral' standpoint is ultimately pointless and useless to anybody other than yourself and those who have the same moral code?
    Nobody ever solved anything in Ireland from the high moral ground, it just doesn't cut it in a real world.

    This isn't to do with the moral high-ground. The rebels were morally wrong, but that can be ignored.

    They were not going to win an armed insurrection with the amount of men, arms, infrastructure, local support, foreign support and logistical means open to them.

    You say:
    The 'rebels' believed the British shouldn't have been there in the 'first place'.

    But their actions were not going to make that not so. If anything they were going to increase tensions, Britain's military presence, and damage the political process. Such tensions would help prevent conscription from coming into force, but I hardly think that that was something that even crossed their minds.

    They had no hope of success. Some of them didn't even care whether or not they succeeded.

    A government can never allow armed insurgents who are disregarding the authority of the government to persist, particularly within a major city and administrative centre. Michael Collins later came to the same conclusion as the British government.

    The rebels caused the deaths of many civilians, caused the destruction of many historic buildings, crippled the political infrastucure of the nationalist movement, bolstered the unionist movement, made partition more likely, civil unrest inevitable. They gave the nationalist politcal movement to ultra-nationalists who crippled this country socially and economically; and granted terrorists a mythos to call upon to justify their own actions.

    Interestingly, when you talk about high-moral ground, this would not describe the position of the British authorities. Their military reaction to the revolutionaries was exactly the same as it would have been had that been a German regiment that had landed in Dublin and taken up strongholds across the city. The British army just wanted to defeat the insurrection in the fastest and easiest fashion; they had no particular angle on it.


  • #314
    Mr.Micro
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,336 ✭✭✭Mr.Micro


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    Of course not. How do you define "no prospect" of peaceful negotiations? Twenty years ago there was "no prospect" of a joint DUP/Sinn Fein government in Northern Ireland. Did that mean that it was never going to happen?

    Indeed that is so true. The prospect of peace was believed to be impossible. Different people come into office or organizations change personnel which can mitigate change. We all hope to see peace in the middle east and at this time it may appear to be never, but optimism will prevail.


  • #315
    Happyman42
    Closed Accounts Posts: 18,066 ✭✭✭✭Happyman42


    RandomName2 wrote: »
    The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand?



    This isn't to do with the moral high-ground. The rebels were morally wrong, but that can be ignored.

    They were not going to win an armed insurrection with the amount of men, arms, infrastructure, local support, foreign support and logistical means open to them.

    You say:



    But their actions were not going to make that not so. If anything they were going to increase tensions, Britain's military presence, and damage the political process. Such tensions would help prevent conscription from coming into force, but I hardly think that that was something that even crossed their minds.

    They had no hope of success. Some of them didn't even care whether or not they succeeded.

    A government can never allow armed insurgents who are disregarding the authority of the government to persist, particularly within a major city and administrative centre. Michael Collins later came to the same conclusion as the British government.

    The rebels caused the deaths of many civilians, caused the destruction of many historic buildings, crippled the political infrastucure of the nationalist movement, bolstered the unionist movement, made partition more likely, civil unrest inevitable. They gave the nationalist politcal movement to ultra-nationalists who crippled this country socially and economically; and granted terrorists a mythos to call upon to justify their own actions.

    Interestingly, when you talk about high-moral ground, this would not describe the position of the British authorities. Their military reaction to the revolutionaries was exactly the same as it would have been had that been a German regiment that had landed in Dublin and taken up strongholds across the city. The British army just wanted to defeat the insurrection in the fastest and easiest fashion; they had no particular angle on it.

    So are you saying that only misguided and stupidly idealistic insurrectionists are morally wrong, if they had managed to 'win' and drive the British out, would it then have been the right thing to do?

    I have avoided answering the above by saying none of the casualities would have happened if the British hadn't been there in the first place. ;)


  • #316
    RandomName2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,575 ✭✭✭RandomName2


    Happyman42 wrote: »
    So are you saying that only misguided and stupidly idealistic insurrectionists are morally wrong, if they had managed to 'win' and drive the British out, would it then have been the right thing to do?

    Yes, if you are removing moralistic considerations as you were advocating. If you removed morals then the ends would justify the means.
    Happyman42 wrote: »
    I have avoided answering the above by saying none of the casualities would have happened if the British hadn't been there in the first place. ;)

    Because the Rising would not have had to happen in the first place?
    How did that work during the civil war?


  • #317
    Chuck Stone
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,030 ✭✭✭✭Chuck Stone


    OCorcrainn wrote: »
    you do not wish to be perceived as a hypocrite.

    Don't you get it? It's a quasi-religious black-and-white form of thinking. Republican violence is illegitimate, evil, and deemed 'terrorism' (spit). State violence, on the other hand, is virtuous and deemed security. The hypocrisy and double standards are quite plain to see for anyone who's able to apply a moderate level of critical thought to their bullshit.

    Take 'the troubles'; the usual suspects will condemn, in no uncertain terms, the Republican backlash against state violence while completely ignoring the violence and dysfunction of the state. The usual suspects will conjure alternate realities (but, there was no need for a backlash) and cite childrens proverbs (two wrongs don't make a right) in flaccid attempts to underpin their dogma, double standards and hypocrisy. When their alternate realities are responded to in kind (if the British had nurtured the NICRA... If Unionists had not treated the minority as untermenschen...) they are ignored.


  • #318
    oscarBravo
    Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,850 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    Chuck Stone wrote: »
    Don't you get it? It's a quasi-religious black-and-white form of thinking. Republican violence is illegitimate, evil, and deemed 'terrorism' (spit). State violence, on the other hand, is virtuous and deemed security. The hypocrisy and double standards are quite plain to see...
    So apply a single standard. Are both state violence and insurrection violence equally acceptable, or equally repugnant?


  • #319
    Happyman42
    Closed Accounts Posts: 18,066 ✭✭✭✭Happyman42


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    So apply a single standard. Are both state violence and insurrection violence equally acceptable, or equally repugnant?

    Because responsibility, compassion and trust is expected of any state , then, violence visited on one section of the community, to the benefit of another section is always the more repugnant because it will always unleash a backlash...always. And it is always an uncontrolable backlash. The State should be able to control itself, the British state frequently didn't and refused to learn the lesson it recieved in the South. That is why one of the states vested with responsibility (and the very one that held everyone else to it's dubious moral code) is busy reviewing and apologising for actions taken on its behalf by its agencies.


  • #320
    Chuck Stone
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,030 ✭✭✭✭Chuck Stone


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    So apply a single standard. Are both state violence and insurrection violence equally acceptable, or equally repugnant?

    I believe the principle role of the state, ideally, is to protect its citizenry. When the state metes out violence in an attempt to bolster the privileges and power of one group at the expense of another it stands, and deserves, to lose its monopoly on force.


  • #321
    Nodin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 46,938 ✭✭✭✭Nodin


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    So apply a single standard. Are both state violence and insurrection violence equally acceptable, or equally repugnant?

    This ignores the motivation behind the violence, which really is the primary concern. Violence to prop up a sectarian statelet cannot be justified, while violence to overthrow one can.


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  • #322
    oscarBravo
    Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,850 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    Nodin wrote: »
    This ignores the motivation behind the violence, which really is the primary concern. Violence to prop up a sectarian statelet cannot be justified, while violence to overthrow one can.
    Which category does 1916 fit into?


  • #323
    Chuck Stone
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,030 ✭✭✭✭Chuck Stone


    Nodin wrote: »
    This ignores the motivation behind the violence, which really is the primary concern. Violence to prop up a sectarian statelet cannot be justified, while violence to overthrow one can.

    Like the purgatorial game of 'Snakes and Ladders' these discussions are, the anti-Republicans inevitably end up at the bottom of the board, staring at this reality, pretending it's an apparition.


  • #324
    oscarBravo
    Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,850 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    Chuck Stone wrote: »
    Like the purgatorial game of 'Snakes and Ladders' these discussions are, the anti-Republicans inevitably end up at the bottom of the board, staring at this reality, pretending it's an apparition.
    I'm guessing that made sense in your head.


  • #325
    Chuck Stone
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,030 ✭✭✭✭Chuck Stone


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    I'm guessing that made sense in your head.

    Ah yes. A weak attempt to goad when you've run out of something useful to contribute.

    How eminently predictable.


  • #326
    oscarBravo
    Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,850 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    Chuck Stone wrote: »
    Ah yes. A weak attempt to goad when you've run out of something useful to contribute.

    How eminently predictable.

    Unlike, say, for example:
    Chuck Stone wrote: »
    Like the purgatorial game of 'Snakes and Ladders' these discussions are, the anti-Republicans inevitably end up at the bottom of the board, staring at this reality, pretending it's an apparition.

    Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not anti-republican. I get accused of it a lot, because I question the orthodoxy. Adherents to orthodoxies tend to get stroppy when their dogma is questioned, but that's not a good reason not to question it.

    There was no justification for the 1916 rising. All I've seen offered as justification is republican orthodoxy. If you can't justify your position without reference to the creed on which you base it, your position is pretty much untenable.

    You will disagree, because you don't question your own creed. That's fair enough, but I'll continue to question it, and you'll continue to come up with trite and incomprehensible board game references.


  • #327
    Chuck Stone
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,030 ✭✭✭✭Chuck Stone


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    Unlike, say, for example:

    Make up your mind. It's morphed from being incomprehensible to an attempt to goad? So you weren't able to understand it but yet you decided it was goading? You've been tripped up by your own sophistry.
    Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not anti-republican. I get accused of it a lot, because I question the orthodoxy. Adherents to orthodoxies tend to get stroppy when their dogma is questioned, but that's not a good reason not to question it.

    You, and your fellow travellers, treat Republican orthodoxy, inasmuch as it exists, as monolithic. It's not. That's simply more evidence of black-and-white conceptualizing of a complex issue.
    There was no justification for the 1916 rising. All I've seen offered as justification is republican orthodoxy. If you can't justify your position without reference to the creed on which you base it, your position is pretty much untenable.

    See what you did there? You just proved my point as it is above. 'oscarBravo's hive-mind Republicans' if you will. I wasn't involved in that part of the discussion - not that you noticed.
    You will disagree, because you don't question your own creed. That's fair enough, but I'll continue to question it

    This creed exists only in your mind.


  • #328
    Happyman42
    Closed Accounts Posts: 18,066 ✭✭✭✭Happyman42


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    Unlike, say, for example:



    Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not anti-republican. I get accused of it a lot, because I question the orthodoxy. Adherents to orthodoxies tend to get stroppy when their dogma is questioned, but that's not a good reason not to question it.

    There was no justification for the 1916 rising. All I've seen offered as justification is republican orthodoxy. If you can't justify your position without reference to the creed on which you base it, your position is pretty much untenable.

    You will disagree, because you don't question your own creed. That's fair enough, but I'll continue to question it, and you'll continue to come up with trite and incomprehensible board game references.

    All your questions where answered by several posters, yet you blithely glided away from the answers.


  • #329
    Nodin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 46,938 ✭✭✭✭Nodin


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    Which category does 1916 fit into?


    Overthrow of a colonial regime. Perfectly valid use of force there.


  • #330
    Scofflaw
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 23,283 ✭✭✭✭Scofflaw


    There's a certain amount of rather pointless handbagging happening - I'm looking particularly at oscarBravo and Chuck Stone's recent exchange here. Pack it in, please.

    moderately,
    Scofflaw


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  • #331
    Norwesterner
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 725 ✭✭✭Norwesterner


    Nodin wrote: »
    Overthrow of a colonial regime. Perfectly valid use of force there.
    And today?


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