The Irish left

I agree with the Irish left on civil liberties (for example, the blasphemy law). I disagree with them primarily on the economy, crime, and foreign policy.

I could live with this until the War on Islamism began on Sept 11th 2001, when foreign policy became so much more important. I cannot now support any party that does not support America and Israel.

The best part of the legacy of the western left - freedom of sexuality, freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
It is on other issues that I disagree with them - the economy, crime, and (above all) foreign policy.

Opponents of the west in Ireland

Can we come up with a definition of "the left"?

I propose that "the left" are best described as opponents of American/western power and opponents of American/western victory against non-western enemies. Their hostility to the democracies ranges from (the norm) endless criticism, sniping and negativity to (somewhat rarer) outright support for the enemies of the democracies (e.g. Cuba, the Palestinians, the Iraqi resistance).

Some of them would deny being opponents of the west. But if you read what they say, there is no sense that they actually want the west to win the current war on Islamism. Their criticism is not the positive criticism of friends, who want to help you. It is the negative criticism of enemies and neutrals, who don't care, or even want you to fail. There is a war on, and these people are demoralising our side. They think they have the moral high ground, but they will come out of this looking more like Eamon de Valera looked after WW2. He thought he had the moral high ground as well.

Opponents of the west in Ireland have every right to speak of course. Indeed, perhaps the strongest and most irrefutable sign that the West is the free world is that many of the strongest voices in the West are its most vociferous critics. Criticising these people should never be interpreted as an attempt to censor them. Criticism is not censorship.

Opponents of the west in Ireland tend to be liberals, left-wing or (on the Northern Ireland issue) republicans. I agree with them on many domestic issues, but more or less everything they write about the world beyond Ireland is wrong:

The Irish left (people) (separate page)

The Irish left (politics) (separate page)

The Irish left (media) (separate page)

The Irish left (groups) (separate page)

Ireland now is the same as Ireland in WW2

I always thought the liberal-left I grew up with hated fascism, especially religious fascism, and would be on the right side in a war against fascism. And yet the test came and they failed it. It makes me wonder who are these people and what do they stand for? These people would never have supported the American and British Allies in WW2. They would have been like de Valera - neutrals.

Bush and Blair are the heirs of the American and British Allies in WW2. The left-liberal media and the "anti-war" protesters are the heirs at best of de Valera, Pope Pius XII and the other neutrals. At worst they are the heirs of the western intellectuals who supported the Nazis. The modern left really do not like it if you point this out.
Air-kissing the terrorists - article by Eoghan Harris on how Ireland today is little different from Ireland in WW2. Do we stand with the democracies or not?
- "Already the Irish public intellectuals have given their answer. Like their grandfathers in 1939 they are going to stand on the sidelines, treat the fight against terrorism as a spectator sport, and if not quite leaving their armchairs to support the IRA, they are certainly going to parrot its Second World War propaganda and argue that America and Britain are the real aggressors."
World War 2
- We - all of us in Ireland - owe our freedom to Britain and America.
When Irish Ties Are Fraying (copy here) by Nuala O'Faolain - A bizarre article in which she calls Ireland "as pro-American a country as exists on the face of the earth". I think it's more correct to say that Ireland should be pro-American, after its history. But then again, so should France, Belgium and Greece.
- She also, bizarrely, says: "Our intelligentsia is pro-American". What country is she talking about? Ireland's intelligentsia is uniformly anti-American, and has been since the Cold War. It is deeply unfashionable and unacceptable to express support for America and Israel in Ireland. My opinions are not remotely popular in Ireland.
Thanks to US, we don't live in a wasteland by Eoghan Harris - "I loathe anti-Americanism which in some respects I believe to be a repressed form of anti-Semitism. Educated Irish people, like most educated Europeans, are today disfigured by anti-Americanism the way most educated Irish and European people were disfigured by anti-Semitism in my grandfather's day."

The Irish left and the Iraq War

Showing they are the true Irish heirs of De Valera, the Irish left opposed, rather than supported, the effort to topple Saddam in Iraq in 2003.

The Iraq war
The "anti-war" protests on Iraq
Killer peaceniks, Henry McDonald, April 13, 2003 - Reports on an Iraqi dissident disgusted with the Irish "anti-war" protesters.
You didn't march in my name by Ruth Dudley Edwards
The left were wrong on Iraq
Lefty gloom-mongers who had a bad war by Eilis O'Hanlon and Jody Corcoran, April 13, 2003, on the failed predictions of:
- Michael D. Higgins
- Vincent Browne
- Fintan O'Toole
- John Gormley
- Mitchel McLaughlin of the violent group Sinn Fein
- Aengus O Snodaigh of the violent group Sinn Fein

The Irish left and Israel (separate page)

The Irish right (separate page)

"This [Israel's attack on Hamas in Gaza] is happening against the background of the past 20 years in which Israel has been, after the US, the world's principal killer nation."
- Irish intellectual Desmond Fennell, in an absurd letter of 13 Jan 2009, sums up the anti-American, anti-Israel world of the Irish intelligentsia.
Fennell somehow forgets the democide in 1989-2009 by North Korea, Rwanda, Congo, Serbia, Sudan, and Saddam's Iraq. We can ignore his mad claims about the US. But under no possible theory even claimed by the most extreme left has Israel killed more people in 1989-2009 than the above. In fact, the Israel-Palestine conflict, despite the blood-thirsty and genocidal rhetoric on the Palestinian side, has been a fairly minor one compared to other recent world conflicts.

Michael J. Totten in Kosovo finds an entire country of European Muslims who are grateful to the US and UK for saving them from modern day Serb fascism.
What they have to say should make ungrateful Irish and European leftists ashamed:
"We are more pro-American than you are," one young Kosovar told me.
"We really like Americans here," a waiter said when he learned where I'm from. "Americans are our best friends in the world. UK is second."
"Thank you," I said. "We appreciate that. Some people don't like us."
"Bad people," he said.

Return to The modern left.

Politics - The modern left - The Irish left