Rulers & Elite of Ireland defend the system.

Friday April 18, 2003 16:05

by Limerick Lady

. . . maybe trying to be invited to Bilderberg;-)

The piece below is the editorial from the Limerick Leader of March 29th most probably written by the editor Brendan Halligan. The sentiments expressed correspond with the views he espouses week in week out in the "lader". Its classic neo conservatism and the first so public defence I have seen of the system. All he has left out is his opinion on the use of force to en-force it. If you email him he is not adverse to commenting on the views expressed in the paper once they are well articulated. Brendan Halligan, Editor Limerick Leader, O'Connell St., Limerick. 061 214500 [email protected]

Democracy?

DEMONSTRATIONS may be dwindling but here in the Mid-West, so heavily dependent on Shannon, many people still oppose the refuelling of American military traffic at the airport. Meanwhile, straw polls nationwide reportedly confirm that most citizens take a similar stance. So, the protestors argue, the Government should ban the flights.

After all, that's only democracy, isn't it? And everybody's in favour of democracy, aren't they? Well, No and No.

Democracy doesn't mean rule by opinion poll or any other such measure of the mood swings of the public. It is a system in which citizens delegate authority to elected representatives. Citizens hire and fire their deputies not as the mood swing takes them but through periodic elections--otherwise the process of government would be so unstable as to make governance impracticable.

This doesn't mean, of course, that democracy begins and ends at election time. In between elections the citizen doesn't have the power to dictate but does have the right to influence. In the modern world this freedom of expression is properly most-widely exercised not in mass demonstrations or public meetings but through the media.

So the media in a democracy must not only reflect the full range of public opinion but also fully inform it. Much is made of the need for diversity of media ownership. Much less is made of need for diversity of policy in the media.

The national media neither fully reflects nor fully informs the wide range of public opinion in the Shannon controversy, for example. Almost without exception the national newspapers are against the GI flights.

So what else is new? On issue after issue for a generation or more there has been a media consensus more or less on the main issues, from the liberal agenda to Nice to Iraq. This does not mean that the continuing consensus is necessarily mistaken; merely that, centred broadly-speaking on the one politically-correct worldview, it tends to exclude the adequate expression of alternative perspectives.

This tendency is particular worrying when the culprit is the nation's public service broadcaster. RTÉs reporters on the ground in the Iraq region are providing heroic service out there but over here the overall war programming, both in general tone and in the composition of its discussion panels, is often in effect anti-Bush and anti-Blair if not exactly pro-Saddam. The bias is not just bad in itself: is self-evidently unhealthy for democracy.

But let's not "blame it all on the media." Democracy's ills run far deeper. The corrosive scepticism and cynicism which surround politics are created mainly by politicians themselves. Nor in this respect is the corruption, repeatedly exposed by tribunal their only failing.

It is only the most obvious. But even incorruptible politicians can, albeit unwittingly, undermine democracy. They can make false promises at the hustings or they can--as in the case of the Shannon controversy--refuse to condemn violent protests.

In a democracy the right to protest is sacred but so is the rule of law. Protests should therefore take place only within the law. Street politics or worse--trespass, assault and sabotage--is no substitute for constitutional politics.

On the contrary, history teaches us it can be the prelude to tyranny, whether of Left or Right. Only an alarmist would suggest that we have now reached such a crisis. Only a fool, however, would ignore the early warning signs of real and present danger to our democracy.