Yes,Yes, I know that we're all meant to do handstands of glee at Sinn Féin's arrival into the democratic family, yet without asking too many questions about what they were doing, only the day before yesterday; but bloody hell, there are limits. We can receive only so many good-goody homilies from that quarter before we start chewing the carpet and munching distractedly on the wine glass, writes Kevin Myers.
For few things arouse such masochistic disbelief in me as Sinn Féin's objection to our having binding military alliances. Please: was not the IRA the armed expression of Libyan foreign policy towards Britain for over a decade? All that Semtex, all those Kalashnikovs, all those deliciously dead bodies: revenge, courtesy of the IRA, against Britain by Gadafy because RAF bases were used in US attacks on Libya in 1986.
The Shinners also had jolly working relationships with a rather different RAF - the Red Army Faction, of Germany; with ETA, of Basque-land; with numerous branches of the PLO in Libya; with FARC in Colombia; and with whatever marginal loopers anywhere in the world who thought the way to make their marginal areas loved and respected by their neighbours was by killing the latter in handsome numbers.
Two-tier superstate
All yesteryear, of course. Still, it's with a grisly, hunted smile that I hear the words from Gerry Adams: "The key issues we will be campaigning on are democracy, neutrality, and the attempt to create a two-tier EU superstate". Well, we know about the Shinners' usual definition of neutrality: provided it's anti-Brit, they're for it. Didn't their version of neutrality see them working hand-in-glove with the Nazis the last time there was a serious attempt to create a two-tier, European superstate: Ubermensch,one way, Juden, the other?
That little historical misjudgment (goys will be goys) aside, what is this neutrality which opponents of Nice - and not just the Shinners - speak of as if it were some elysium of pomegranates and lissom maidens with marble breasts and silken thighs all akimbo, lolling beside pools of champagne? Neutralia is not an Eden, but just a diseased dependency on the financial efforts and the military determination of others.
The only thing to be said for this tiresome piety is the rather pathetic masturbatory moral pleasure it gives its practitioners; yet its attendant language has so contaminated our political vocabulary that most of the pro-Nice lobby are hysterically squealing that a Yes vote will not affect our neutrality. This is the equivalent of proudly declaring our devotion to our neighbours, and to the principles of neighbourliness, with the firm assurance that if our neighbours' houses catch fire, we will maintain a scrupulous neutrality towards both fire and victim.
Eastern Europe
So what is this land, Neutralia? How stand its residents on Auschwitz, on the SS Totenkopfverbande, on the Gulag, on Beria, on Himmler, on Pol Pot, on Milosevic, on Srebenenice? How stand they on Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, and the abduction and murder of so many of its people? How stand they on the subjugation of all of Eastern Europe for the best part of two generations? And how can they be proud of their boastful, swaggering refusal ever to help freedom anywhere?
Unfortunately, a Yes vote will not end our neutrality; nor will it end the jackanapes posturing of our professional neutralists, as if Yes would cause us to forfeit residence in this other Eden, this demi-paradise, this fortress built by Nature for herself against infection and the hand of war, this blessed plot, this kingless realm, this Neutralia. But at least it might allow our foreign policy to be taken seriously.
And this is the issue which is never addressed in the entire neutrality debate, so infected has it been by the insidious Neutralian virus. Here is the truth, learnt from a dozen embassies. Nobody "respects" our defenceless neutrality. It is an object of ridicule everywhere: and the buffoonish and cowardly prating that accompanies our refusal to be loyal to our friends in time of need provokes not respect, but only contempt and derision.
Neutralists claim neutrality helps our UN peacekeepers. This is piffle. Not being able to defend a spider-space of our skies or guard an egg-cup of our seas does not enhance the peace-keeping skills of our Defence Forces. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Denmark have splendid peace-keeping records: yet they are avowedly and unashamedly non-neutral, and as far as I know, all four deployed special forces in Afghanistan in the war against Islamo-fascism.
Wrong discussion
We are having the wrong discussion about Nice. We should be treating it as the first step into NATO, which ex-Communist countries - knowing a thing or two about freedom, and better still, the lack of it - are queuing to join, or have joined. If it's good enough for the Poles and the Czechs. . .
Yet for all this, I am oddly reassured by both varieties of green, the ju-ju rain-dancers and the knee-breaking baseball-batters, who want us to vote No. When I hear Patricia McKenna urging me to do something, usually in the shrill tones of broken glass running across an orphan's teeth, the compulsion to do the opposite is almost irresistible. Ditto, the Shinners.
But at this point, I must except the great and good Alex Maskey from that generalisation. He's an outstanding gentleman - decent, bright and brave - who clearly signed on to Sinn Féin on one of those bad post-fight days when he wasn't thinking very clearly. All that boxing, you know: it can make a chap dizzy. Know the feeling well.