Tell us this - have we ever found the run of ourselves? Never mind for the moment the duty-free question, the Millennium monument, the compensation culture, the re-roofing of Cashel Cathedral, the rise in traffic congestion and prison costs, the fall in vocations and sea-trout stocks: today's controversy is over our proposed re-admission to the Commonwealth. It is easy to understand why the matter provokes such passion. When broken into its two constituent parts, "Commonwealth" is an anguished word for all of us, as we accelerate at increasing speed away from our grossly common rural roots and towards the accumulation of ever greater wealth, corresponding sophistication and more neutral accents. The proposed re-entry may well be, as my esteemed colleague Seamus Martin has suggested, mere kite-flying on the part of our government. But if so, it is kite-flying of a very high order, bordering on the stratospheric. The kite itself is on the large side, too. Air balloons come to mind, even Doodlebugs.
Meanwhile, warnings are being issued from all sides. Our columnists are girding their loins and have already been sparring with each other. Various interest groups are on the alert, even on emergency war footing. The New Ireland Group, for example, warns that "this island is small" compared with Britain and "could lose its sense of itself if it encourages assimilation by its more powerful neighbour". This only serves to highlight once again our embarrassing inferiority complex, our desperate fear of identity loss and the ever-present horror of being swallowed like a minnow by the neighbouring whale of Britain. The whole business seems to have originated with remarks made by Mary Robinson in one of her last speeches as President, when she said that the question of Ireland rejoining the Commonwealth "would be a good way of assessing the insecurities we still have" after 75 years of independence. The cheek of her. Let Mary speak for herself and assess her own insecurities if she has nothing better to do, but keep her nose out of our personal businesses and private lives. That wasn't all Mary said. She spoke of "the lack of a firm sense of ourselves so that we cannot address that question without a great deal of hesitation and emotion".
Look: it's all very well for Mary Robinson, entirely Europeanised, galvanised and globalised as she now is, but our hesitation and emotion are national characteristics, developed over centuries of subservience, poverty and degradation, and they are not to be mocked.
We have no reason to be ashamed of our mumbling, bumbling, blubbering ways and our mad fits of uncontrollable passion, alcohol-induced or otherwise. They are part of what we are. Moreover, these national characteristics have served us well at home and abroad, as we skulked like rats for decades along the potato ridges of Scotland, the sewers of London, the Manhattan underground - and from there, in time, along our unique underground cultural avenues, to the boardrooms, broking houses, financial grottoes, industrial inner sanctums, political summits and banking power centres of the world.
Are we to give these characteristics up now, and replace them with - what? Smirking self-confidence, a proud, overbearing manner and a stiff upper lip in times of difficulty? I think not.
Our international neighbours have certain expectations of us as Irish people. Are we now to disappoint them, to conform to some bland European stereotype with which they are already drearily familiar? Surely we owe them more than that.
Mary Robinson, obviously though needlessly embarrassed on our behalf as she traverses the civilised world, wishes us to blank out our peaty history, throw overboard our rain-drenched, drink-fuelled culture, and acquire the elements of poise, dignity, hauteur and pride, all to go with the Armani and Versace outfits, the Jaguars, Mercedes and mansions which we can increasingly afford. We must resist such blandishments and preserve the priceless raiments of our threatened sovereign nationhood free from stain. If the Commonwealth is now seeking to include us once again, we can be sure it's because there's something in it for them, rather than for us.
Our native cunning, distrust of the stranger, emotional instability, fondness for drink, social clumsiness, general incoherence and healthy paranoia regarding the world outside are some of the national characteristics most envied by our sophisticated European neighbours.
