By The Thinking Man, June 10th 2020
In my previous two reflections I have been tracing some of the ambiguities and ambivalence surrounding the celebration of the seminal event in the struggle for Irish freedom; the 1916 Easter Rising. In the first reflection we saw that some of that unease in the Irish psyche had to do with the fact that as nation we have ceded many of our freedoms as a sovereign nation to an ever expanding EU superstate and embraced a globalist liberal agenda at the expense of our traditional Catholic heritage, a situation similar to which Pearse and his band of Patriots were trying to extricate Ireland from. And in the second reflection we looked at how our modern attitudes towards violence has muddied our view of that great event.
I would now like to look at what Pearse, from his writings, understood what constituted Irish freedom and Irish nationhood. A topic that is very important at the moment as we are witnessing the destruction of nation states, their traditions and cultures in the name of a globalist multicultural, liberal, superstate.
As I said in the previous reflection Pearse saw the writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763 -1798) as the foundation for the nationalist understanding of Ireland as a free and sovereign nation, as a republic, not unlike the nascent American republic that was finding its feat on the world stage. From the pamphlet the ‘The Separatist Idea’, Pearse quotes from ‘The Rights of Man‘ attributed to Tone
“(T)he historic claim of Ireland has never being more worthily stated than in these words:
The inherent and indefeasible claims of every free nation to rest in this nation—the will and the power to be happy, to pursue the common weal as an individual pursues his private welfare, and to stand in insulated independence, an imperatorial people.“
Padraig Pearse. The Separatist Idea, The Coming Revolution; The Political Writings and Speeches of Patrick Pearse. Mercier Press, Cork. 2012, p.217
Tone was by no means a secularist and his concept of the nation had a spiritual aspect; again from the ‘The Rights of Man’:
“The Rights of Man are the Rights of God, and to vindicate the one is to maintain the other. We must be free in order to serve Him whose service is perfect freedom.”
ibid
Pearse develops this theme further in his pamphlet on the writings of the great patriot, Thomas Davis, who lived in the middle of the 19th century during the time of the great famine/genocide. Pearse has great regard for Davis, not just as a patriot and nationalist but as a man of genuine nobleness and sanctity of character.
“The highest form of genius is the genius for sanctity, the genius for noble life and thought. That genius was Davis’s. Character is the greatest thing in a man; and Davis’s character was such as the Apollo Belvidere is said to be in the physical order —in his presence all men stood more erect.“
Padraig Pearse. The Siritual Nation, The Coming Revolution; The Political Writings and Speeches of Patrick Pearse. Mercier Press, Cork. 2012, p.252
Pearse believed in a spiritual tradition that is the soul of Ireland and there is such a spiritual tradition corresponding to every true nationality. This soul of the nation is distinct from the intellectual heritage though it reveals itself through that heritage. He thought it analogous to the distinction between the soul and mind of man with the soul being independent of the material while the mind is largely dependent on it. He thought that it was chiefly in the language of the nation that the soul of the nation seemed to reside “if by language we understand literature and folklore as well as sounds and idioms,” but it also reveals itself in all the arts, institutions, actions and inner life of the nation.
“Davis was the first of modern Irishmen to make explicit the truth that a nationality is a spirituality. Tone had postulated the great primal truth that Ireland must be free. Davis, accepting that and developing it; stated the truth in its spiritual aspect, that Ireland must be herself; not merely a free self-governing state, but authentically the Irish nation, bearing all the majestic marks of her nationhood. That the nation may live, the Irish life, both the inner life and the outer life, must be conserved. Hence the language, which is the main repository of the Irish life, the folklore, the literature, the music, the art, the social customs, must be conserved. Davis fully realised, with the Gaelic poets, that a nationality connotes a civilisation, and that a civilisation is a body of traditions.”
Ibid..p.238
Pearse saw democracy as the natural way for a sovereign people to exercise its freedom and thought that true nationalists would open the sufferage widely to men and women of reasonable mind. And contrary to the caricature which modern commentators tend to portray him as, Pearse thought that love of country would naturally lead to a love of the people who made up the country and thence “there is a deep humanism in every true Nationalist. ”
“If we accept the definition of Irish freedom as ‘the Rights of Man in Ireland’ we shall find it difficult to imagine an apostle of Irish freedom who is not a democrat. One loves the freedom of men because one loves men. There is therefore a deep humanism in every true Nationalist. There was a deep humanism in Tone; and there was a deep humanism in Davis. The sorrow of the people affected Davis like a personal sorrow.”
Ibid…p.255
Pearse’s love for his nation is a Godly love, as reflected in the Davis’s famous song ‘A Nation Once Again’.
It whispered too that freedom’s ark
and service high and holy
would be profaned by feelings dark
for passions vane or lowly
but freedom comes from God’s right hand
and needs a Godly train
and righteous men must make our land
A Nation Once Again
For Pearse, Ireland was not just a collection of people or an independent country but a Spiritual Nation
A man’s heart plans his way
but it is the Lord who makes his steps secure
Porverbs 16:9
What is happening in our country today? Well to understand that we must understand the globalist playbook. Globalism wants to break down nation-states and their traditions and cultures that support them in order to bring about a transnational, corporate superstate. To do this they use mass immigration to replace the native population with people from radically different cultures. Alongside this, they use, identity politics, a form of Marxism, which sees society as diverse minority groups struggling for equality under the dominant oppressive traditional culture. In this outlook, one is defined by our group identity. Using a radical definition of equality as equality of outcomes instead of equality of opportunities and supported by numerous NGOs, often heavenly subsidised by Government and international philanthropies, it drives a wrecking ball through the moral values and traditions that have formed and defined the nation-state until then. With the total control of the mainstream media, academia, and the entertainment industry, the next step is to strip the people of their history. In order to make Marxism palatable to the populace, it needs a bogey man from which they can deliver the populace from. In Ireland that is the Catholic Church and her recent history. The events, heroes, and important figures of the country’s history are vilified and subjected to the principles of feminism, diversity politics, and LBGTQ ism, and the institutions of the Church and State are painted in the darkest light.
As I write this, there is an intense media campaign in the wake of the George Floyd killing, to convince the Irish people that they are racist and the Prime Minister of Ireland has called for the taking down of statues of historical figures that are “tainted by racism”. Irish politicians have sycophantically endorsed every directive from the UN, EU and during this COVID 19 pandemic, the WHO; not only have they hosted Biderburger meetings they regularly send serving ministers to them; they bent over backwards to accommodate multi-corporations tax-free, paid millions of taxpayers money to elite foundations of Clinton and Gates to promote their global agenda and have outdone each other in endorsing every dictate of a perverse liberal agenda not to mention promoting the cults of climate change and gay pride. It should not come as a surprise that on the day the Irish commemorate the Easter Rising, Easter Monday, Leo Varadkar, the Irish Prime Minister, raised the UN flag outside the GPO, (General Post Office, the HQ for the Rising). A clear message of who is ruling Ireland.
