How distressing for Mary O’Rourke that citizens are preparing to engage in a democratic debate on an important question!
SOME POLITICIANS appear to have problems grasping the basic idea of democracy: that the people, not their representatives, are sovereign. Nowhere is this more obvious than in relation to the Constitution which, 73 years ago, the “people of Éire” gave themselves. The Constitution of Ireland, or Bunreacht na hÉireann, is the final arbiter of fundamental questions affecting our society, a circumstance that some politicians clearly regard with impatience.
On Monday, The Irish Timesreported that the Fianna Fáil TD Mary O'Rourke has "warned" that "various groupings" are "joining forces" to "fight" the proposed referendum on "children's rights". Oh my! How distressing that citizens are preparing to engage in democratic debate concerning an important question about the direction of their society!
It seems O’Rourke’s powerlessness to prevent this incipient nuisance-making is causing her anxiety. She “warned” that, arising from the involvement of “pro-life” and “anti-Lisbon activists”, the referendum might not have “a sweet passage”. “The forces of old will wish to re-assert themselves,” she prophesied. “They are the same forces that were out during the Lisbon campaign and all of the early pro-life and anti-abortion campaigns.”
A visitor from afar might have difficulty understanding what O’Rourke was getting at. What does “forces of old” signify? Isn’t this referendum about a new and discrete question? What is the connection between a referendum on “children’s rights” and a treaty concerning internal EU housekeeping? What has this to do with “pro-life and anti-abortion”? (Is there, indeed, a difference between “pro-life” and “anti-abortion”?) Are not differing viewpoints inevitable in a referendum campaign?
I would explain to such a visitor that O'Rourke was invoking an ideological mindset that, lacking coherent arguments, presents every question facing Irish society as a choice between "backward" thinking deriving from an intrinsically Irish and/or Catholic view of human reality, and standard "progressive" thinking arising from "liberal values" as implicit in, say, a typical Irish Timeseditorial or Sinn Féin manifesto.
The issues in the proposed referendum, however, have nothing to do with “liberalism” thus understood. They have, though, to do with liberalism of a different hue: that which seeks to keep everyday human life, as far as practicable, free from state interference.
Advocates of this amendment rely on a loose, sentimental use of language, of which the term “children’s rights” is an example. Since children are by definition incapable of exercising such “rights” for themselves, the outcome of a constitutional change in this area is likely to be a transfer of rights from parents to the State, in effect to the Health Service Executive, an organisation with zero credibility in child-welfare matters. There is therefore nothing intrinsically or self-evidently “progressive” about this amendment. Mary O’Rourke is free to disagree. But, if, rather than seeking to demonstrate the nature or extent of my putative error, she seeks to rely on scorn and belittlement of what she intuits as my motivation, citizens are free to draw the obvious inferences concerning the quality of her own case.
O’Rourke, who chaired the cross-party committee that produced the amendment proposal, is entitled to argue for constitutional change. But she is not entitled to present this amendment as incontrovertibly beneficial or to cast aspersions on the legitimacy or bona fides of those contributing to the discussion on the other side. “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion,” she said, “but opinion based on fact, not opinion based on fantasy.” Translation: “Everyone is entitled to an opinion provided it’s the same as mine.”
She is wrong: citizens are entitled to their opinions full stop. If O’Rourke regards particular opinions as fantastic, she is entitled to identify their phantasmagorical aspects. If someone opposes the amendment on the basis that the earth is flat, O’Rourke is entitled to state that the world is – in her opinion (if this is her opinion) – not flat, and to outline her evidence for this contention. Citizens may even find her arguments persuasive. But she is not entitled to disparage arguments before they are made on the basis of snide throwaways concerning the pedigrees of those who may seek to make them.
There is, in other words, a difference between democratic disputation and contentless sneering at people of whom you disapprove because they have not previously shared your perspectives. As one of the most senior politicians advocating this amendment, Mary O’Rourke has a duty to explain and persuade rather than go about directing knowing winks at those on her own “side”.
The Constitution expresses the total truth of the Irish nation’s sense of itself. If O’Rourke has a proposal to amend it to embrace what she considers advancing understandings of what is beneficial for human society, then we have a responsibility to consider what she says. But there is a concomitant responsibility on those proposing such changes to remain cognisant that, until amended by the people, Bunreacht na hÉireann remains a sacred text, and that anyone who defends its integrity is entitled to respect.
This goes beyond good manners, although those too would be welcome.