So you thought you understood Ireland?

Don't you love limericks?

There have been some big changes lately in Ireland. Some of them have been sort of predictable. Others have been unexpected. Some of the issues regarding free speech have echoed developments in other parts of the anglosphere (and other parts of the world).

Ace has covered some of recent changes, starting last week (don't comment on old threads):

March 15: Has Ireland Passed Peak Woke? Public Rejects Two Measures to "Modernize" the Constitution

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has conceded defeat in the vote over two constitutional amendments that would have broadened the definition of family and removed language about a woman's role at home. Vote tallies Saturday showed both referendums failing in a blow to his government. Varadkar had pushed the vote to enshrine gender equality in the constitution and scheduled the vote on Friday, International Women's Day.

Ace comments:

I would say this rejection is based 50% on the amendments themselves, and 50% based on people finally revolting to this constant "Year Zero" disruption of society.

The term "Year Zero" refers to the idea that after Maoists or communists take power, they declare it "Year Zero" of the New Age, and set about to pulling down all statues, burning all books, denouncing all traditions, and eradicating everything normal and decent in their mad drive to remake all of humanity in the twisted, ugly image of communist malcontent losers.

There was no history before. We decide what history is right now, in Year Zero.

And we've all been living in Year Zero since George Floyd swallowed a huge bolus of drugs and died due to his own poor life choices.

And people have had enough.

Matt Taibbi wrote about Year Zero back on July 4, 2020 . . .

Maybe it's worth re-reading the post above now that you have a little time this weekend. May fit in with a movie recommendation below.

Then this happened:

March 20: Ireland's Woke Prime Minister Announces "Bolt Out of the Blue" Resignation

Despite NBC "News" making a mystery of this sudden resignation, Ed Morrissey opines that the explanation is simple: The woke gay PM pushed forward two constitutional amendments to redefine the family and rebut gender stereotypes and the Irish public stood up and finally said "NO."

Heh.

Then Ace provided more interesting details in a disturbing post the next day, reminding us that the fight is not over:

March 21: Scotland Criminalizes Free Speech

The Scottish free speech content is very disturbing, and you may want to read Ace's detailed commentary again. More on free speech below. But back to Ireland:

I was wondering how someone leading a party which the media calls "center-right" turns out to be so woke. Apparently he "evolved in office," like Liz Cheney.

Quoting Theo McDonald:

.. Shortly after clinching the top job, Varadkar was featured on the cover of Time with the heading "An Island at the Center of the World."

Praising Ireland's globalism, the magazine lauded him for his recent coming out of the closet and Indian background -- his father hails from Mumbai.

In recent months, immigration has skyrocketed in Ireland with several high-profile incidents such as the stabbing of three children by an Algerian migrant leading to riots in the middle of Dublin.

Varadkar displayed a level of tone deafness that showed the opposite of leadership by attacking the rioters and other concerned citizens as "far right," failing to bring the nation together.

It appeared for a while that Varadkar's party, which pushed him out, had really grand ambitions for their immigration plans:

Yesterday, Brendan O'Neill wrote a little farewell piece in Spiked:

Good riddance to the man who turned Ireland into a laboratory of the new illiberalism.

It's a detailed piece. Here are a few good parts. Varadkar came to power as part of a coalition government:

Imagine Trump and Biden hot-desking together in the Oval Office, or the Tories and Labour waltzing hand in hand into Downing Street, and you'll have a sense of the strange outrage that is Ireland's coalition government. Its existence speaks to the exhaustion of Ireland's old politics and its replacement by a wholly post-ideological, post-history, technocratic form of governance. And its chief beneficiary, until Wednesday, was Varadkar. Unpopular with the people, loved by the overclass, he built his political brand on the rubble of Ireland's old public life.

And what did he do from his lofty, unearned perch of power? Nothing good. All his big initiatives seemed designed less to improve people's lives than to improve the people themselves. To fix their backward thinking, wash away their sinful thoughts. To drag them - screaming if necessary - into a New Ireland cleansed of its problematic past and all problematic beliefs and remade in the woke image of King Leo. As befits a taoiseach canonised by the establishment rather than backed by the people, Varadkar pursued a low-level war of attrition on Irish society and its disappointing citizens.

Consider his infamous hate-speech bill. Across the world people have expressed alarm at the tyranny that would flow from it. Its promise to punish, severely, 'incitement to hatred' on account of a person's race, gender or religion could easily give rise to the criminalisation of opinion. The opinion that a person's assumed gender is bullshit, for example. Or a feminist refusing to say she / her about a he / him. Or an individual floridly bristling at mass immigration. All might be judged hateful by the state and fined, even jailed. Indeed, following the rioting by mobs ticked off about Ireland's immigration levels, Varadkar said he would punish not only the rioters - as one would expect - but also 'online promoters of hate'. That is, people who said things, on the internet, about immigration or Islam or whatever else it might be.

His dream was nothing less than thoughtpolicing, state oversight of belief. He wanted to empower the police and courts to punish the utterance of certain ideas - an empowerment the coalition will continue to pursue following his resignation. If a Third World country had an essentially unelected leader who was passing laws to punish the eccentric and the dissenting, we'd call it despotic. What should we call Varadkar's Ireland?

Good question. Lofty goals for someone who came to power under such dubious circumstances.

Or consider his stance on immigration. Under Varadkar immigration and asylum rose hugely and his clique looked down upon anyone who raised concerns as racist. Country people and working people who worried out loud about immigration's impact on smalltown life or public services or jobs risked being sneered at by their distant overlords in Dublin. You're xenophobic, would come the rebuke. Varadkar made it clear that local communities would have no veto over who can live among them.

Under Varadkar, immigration policy wasn't just about securing cheap labour from abroad or pleasing Brussels by bowing to the Single Market's insistence on 'freedom of movement'. It became an imperious crusade, a means through which Dublin's elites might extend their cultural dominion over the country. Migrants were made into vessels of the ideology of multiculturalism, the elites hoping their arrival in some small town might modernise and improve it.

If, as Varadkar himself said this month, immigration has become a 'top-tier' issue, it's not because race hate has exploded on the Emerald Isle. It's because Ireland's immigration policy is increasingly a social re-engineering project swaddled in liberal-speak, and people don't like it. It's not immigrants they hate so much as an elite so arrogant that it has granted itself the kingly right to re-engineer the nation itself so that it better reflects the multicultural worldview of Dublin and better serves the economic requirements of global capital.

Varadkar's rule was government of the elite, by the elite, for the elite. His government against the people added up to an attempted reordering of how people think, what they may say, what their communities should look like and even how they should relate to the constitution. All had to be bent to the fanatical whims of a taoiseach who was never even called upon by the people to govern. . .

Ireland is a small country. The excesses may have been easier to spot there than they would be here.

Michael Shellenberger reminds us that free speech is an international issue

(Though little Ireland or Scotland may determine social media policies for all of Europe, if they get their way.)

In Ireland, the government is pushing hate speech legislation that would allow police to invade homes and seize phones and computers.

Governments Are Creating A Fake Hate Panic To Censor, Interfere In Elections, And Imprison Their Political Enemies

It's alarming what's happening in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, Brazil, and the EU

The US and other governments around the world… pic.twitter.com/gfvEr7HTNX

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) March 22, 2024

Quotes

John A. Lucas, h/t Instapundit

When I read the constant exhortations from Joe Biden, Anthony Blinken, and others urging Israel to enter into a cease-fire with its mortal enemies and to participate in a "two-state solution" with those who have sworn to destroy it, I cannot help but reflect on the advice from General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur - - lhard and bloody lessons learned in the Pacific from 1941 to 1945:

"From the Far East, I send you one single thought, one sole idea - written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo - 'there is no substitute for victory.' "

Melanie Phillips

As some of us have long feared and that has now become undeniable, Israel is fighting not one but two wars of defense against a malevolent foe.

The first is against the axis of Iran and its proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis of Yemen. The second is against America.

The Biden administration is to construct a pier off the Gaza shore to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid. This week, Israeli TV's Channel 14 reported that, astoundingly, the Americans have handed over the financing and management of this pier to Qatar, the founder, funder and protector of Hamas and therefore the godfather of the Oct. 7 pogrom.

Channel 14 said the Qataris demanded that the new pier be built by a Gaza company named Al Hissi, which is controlled by Hamas.

Giving Qatar control of this pier would ensure Hamas continues to exist, enrich itself and attack Israel with an open route into Gaza. As Yigal Carmon, the founder of MEMRI, has written in horror: "The U.S. has flipped sides, from Israel to Qatar."

America could end this war tomorrow by telling the Qataris that unless they instruct Hamas to surrender and release the hostages, Qatar will forfeit its preferential treatment by the United States and will henceforth be treated instead as an international pariah.

Seems simple.

WEEKEND

Have you seen and do you like any of these?

Personal Favs:
Mr Jones (2019)
The Lives of Others (2006)
The Way Back (2010)
Chernobyl (TV Series) (2019)
The Killing Fields (1984)
Katyn (2007)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1970)

— Yuri Bezmenov's Ghost (@Ne_pas_couvrir) March 22, 2024

Music

Bach just had a birthday. It’s simply impossible to imagine what the world would sound like, had he never been born. This is a terrific tribute.https://t.co/djeUv3IHRt

— The Real Mike Rowe (@mikeroweworks) March 22, 2024

Interesting that Bach's music seems to be more admired by musicians who practice playing it than by average people.

Air on a G String

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Last week's thread, March 16, Immediate Gratification

Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.

posted by K.T. at 11:18 AM

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