A chairde —
Yet again I had it
brought forcefully home to me that time and the tide wait for no man. Or woman.
Consequently (I seem to be using that word an awfully lot these days) a
“non-essential” task such as writing a newsletter, even with an Irish theme in
March, can take second place. It doesn’t
help any that there also seems to be a number of tax-related items that also
crop up.
The bottom line is
that once again I received no news or contributions of material, so you’ll have
to be satisfied with what I just happen
to have in the hopper.
Beannachtai!
Michael
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Contents
Announcements
Organization,
Publication and Membership Information
Letters
News and Reports
Articles
Food
Reviews
The Fourth Page
Announcements
As a newsletter, we rely on you to tell us what’s going
on. If you have an announcement for an
upcoming event, please let us know. Just
keep in mind that we try to publish on the 17th of every month, so
get your announcements in at least a few days before that. Otherwise, consider sending it in as a report
or a news item for the subsequent month.
• The Usual Nagging Announcement. We still have a number of subscribers who are
probably wondering why they’re not getting the newsletter. It’s because they haven’t verified their
subscriptions by clicking on the link in the e-mail Google sent to their
specified e-mail address. If you
subscribed but have not received the newsletter (which means you’re visiting
the blog and are reading this there), it’s an easy matter to correct. Enter your e-mail address again, and Google
will send you another verification e-mail.
• The Colonel John Fitzgerald Division of the Ancient Order
of Hibernians in America in Arlington, Virginia, now meets the third Sunday of
each month at St. Thomas More Cathedral School.
There’s no bar, of course, but the meeting is easier to get to for those
of us who sing at the 11:00 Mass on Sunday at the Cathedral.
Organization, Publication and
Membership Information
What We Are
Litir Scéala an tSIG
Gaelach is the newsletter of the Irish Special Interest Group of American
Mensa, Ltd. More information about the
SIG and this newsletter may be accessed by clicking
on this link.
Resources
We are preparing to put together a list of
resources and organizations that might be useful to our members. Due to the global scope of our readership, we
are trying to limit the list to organizations that extend beyond a purely local
constituency. This is a matter of simple
logistics, due to the immense number of organizations out there. If you’re looking for a local group to get
involved with — and we encourage that — do an internet search. You may be both amazed and pleased at what
you will find. We expect to list
resources as we rebuild our membership, but right now . . . oh, you know the
rest.
Who We Are
No new members this month, blah, blah. We have an increasing number of visitors and
casual readers, — no, really — but that’s not going to get the SIG reactivated
officially, however gratifying it may be personally.
Anyway, here’s this month’s membership report:
5 Members of Mensa
2 Other
1 Institutional
Member
25 Newsletter
Subscribers
33 Total
Circulation (This does not include forwarded newsletters or visitors to the
website who have not signed up for the newsletter — more than 900 to date.)
Letters
We had a few admin notes back and forth between the
Coordinators, but nothing earth-shaking.
Evidently, none of our members or subscribers have anything to report.
• The article/book review we mentioned last month turned
into a book itself. It just kept getting
bigger and bigger. The problem is that
the book we reviewed just had so many problems.
The biggest one, of course, is the fact that the author played fast and
loose with the first principle of reason, redefining everything. This sort of thing has been called “mental
suicide.” Stay tuned for further
developments.
• We did send in a review of the book, though. It was rejected, of course. Evidently you really don’t want to point out
that a book of which many people have spoken well has some extremely serious
problems.
• The new pope is not Irish.
All in good time.
News and Reports
Members of the Irish SIG don’t usually belong only to the
SIG, but to other groups with an Irish orientation as well. This is all to the good — the more society
becomes more social, the better
chance we have of influencing our institutions in a positive way and carrying
out “acts of social justice” aimed at improving the common good for
everybody. We want to encourage your
community participation and then report on local events in which SIG members
took part.
• Guy in Iowa sent us a rare copy of Fulton Sheen’s
Communism and the Conscience of the West.
We’re looking forward to reading it as soon as we get the time.
Articles
Feature Article: State
Sovereignty . . . Or Sovereignty of the People?
As the Preamble to the Constitution clearly states, “We, the
People” are the source of all rights and powers that we have delegated to the
government so that it may carry out its proper function. This is in strict accordance with the
political philosophy of Saint Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, with which most of
the Founding Fathers were familiar through John Locke and Algernon Sidney,
although George Mason of Gunston Hall may have read Bellarmine directly.
The purpose of government is to secure and protect each
person’s natural rights to life, liberty, and property. This is generally construed as restricting
the role of government to providing equality of opportunity, not pre-determined
results. To this, Catholic social
teaching adds that, in “extreme cases,” in distributive justice the government
may levy additional taxes to take care of people who cannot take care of
themselves. (Rerum Novarum, § 22.)
(This should not be confused with the responsibility that
employers have to pay an adequate wage when workers are dependent on wages for
their sole source of income. That comes
under commutative justice and has a different rationale. Quadragesimo
Anno, § 110.)
The problem is that, as ownership and control of capital
have become concentrated in the hands of a private sector elite (capitalism) or
a public sector bureaucracy (socialism), the great mass of people have been
forced into a condition of dependency, either on their employers for wages, or
the State for welfare: “a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.” (Rerum Novarum, § 3.)
Because (as Daniel Webster noted in the Massachusetts
Constitutional Convention of 1820) “Power naturally and necessarily follows
property,” the obvious solution to the problems caused by concentrated capital
ownership is not to vest ownership/control in the State, as Marx advocated
(“The insane remedy of agrarian laws,” as Orestes Brownson put it). Rather,
“The law . . . should favor ownership, and its policy should
be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.” (Rerum Novarum, § 46.)
Widespread capital ownership (what some have called “the
Distributist State”) cannot be achieved by redistribution of existing wealth or
by redefining the natural law, e.g., turning private property from a natural
right into prudential matter by over-emphasizing the social aspect of
ownership.
This creates a dilemma.
As far as most people are concerned, the only way to finance new capital
formation is to cut consumption and accumulate money savings. They are unaware of the fact — or reject it
outright — that since the 17th century and the invention of central
banking, most new capital formation during periods of rapid growth has been
financed not with past reductions in consumption, but with the present value of
future increases in the production of marketable goods and services.
Reliance on existing accumulations of savings to finance new
capital formation paints you into a corner, however. By definition, because they are the only ones
who can, in general, afford to save, existing accumulations of savings are a
virtual monopoly of the rich. That
means, absent some stroke of luck or happenstance, all new capital formation
will belong to the already-rich by right of private property.
Chesterton and Belloc, realizing this, could only advocate
sitting back and waiting for the current system to collapse, then hope that the
new system would be built along more rational lines.
Unfortunately, many people are impatient, or don’t think
that a collapse of civilization is something to be hoped for, even as a last
resort. They demand that the State move
in and redistribute in some fashion.
Since this is done as a solution, rather than as an expedient in an
emergency, this requires that fundamental natural rights such as life, liberty,
and property, even the natural law itself, be redefined to allow redistribution
without necessarily calling it redistribution.
Even more unfortunately, you cannot give the State the power
to “re-edit the dictionary” (as Keynes called it) without surrendering
everything and becoming a “mere creature of the State.” In order to preserve their livelihood, people
will agree to almost anything, even legalized abortion, massive redistribution,
or complete regimentation of the economy — violations of life, property, and
liberty, respectively.
Is there a way out of this situation without having to
commit what Saint Thomas Aquinas hinted is “mental suicide”? Yes: a program that would vest every child,
woman and man in America with direct ownership of capital paid for not with
past reductions in consumption that already belong to others and that cannot be
redistributed without destroying the institution of private property entirely,
but with the profits of the capital itself.
One such proposal is called “Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen.”
Food
“Double B Chicken”
This is another important component of the chicken and rice
recipe we promised, but it’s good on its own.
We call it “Double B” because it’s Brined and Broiled.
Ingredients
¼ cup salt
1 tsp ground cayenne pepper
¼ cup lemon juice
1 quart of water
4-8 chicken leg quarters, cut into drumsticks and thighs,
and trimmed of the back portion and excess fat
Additional water to top off
Margarine
Garlic powder
Paprika
Black pepper
Flour
1 pint chicken broth, defatted.
Instructions
Get a clean glass pickle jar. Boil the salt and cayenne pepper in 1 quart
of water for a couple of minutes. Let it
cool. Put the chicken parts in the
pickle jar. Pour in the brine, then the lemon juice, and enough cold water to
cover. Put in the refrigerator for a day
or two.
Use what you trimmed from the chicken to make one pint of
broth. Put it in the refrigerator and
defat.
When ready to cook, heat up the broiler and put the chicken
parts in a pan with a couple tablespoons of margarine, and sprinkle with garlic
powder, paprika, and black pepper. Do NOT add any salt.
Put the pan under the broiler for about ten minutes or so
(each oven is different, so use your best judgment). Take the pan out, flip the chicken, and put
it back in for another ten minutes or so.
With an electric stove, you can turn the heat off when there are five
minutes remaining to save a miniscule amount of energy. When done, take the pan out of the oven and
put it on the stove.
Turn on the burner, and remove the chicken from the
pan. Make a roux with the flour and the
fat in the pan. When ready, add the
chicken broth, stirring until smooth. If
you’re saving the chicken to use in chicken and rice, you can use this on
noodles or mashed potatoes or something.
Otherwise, you can serve it with the chicken.
Reviews
Sorry. I’ve only been
reading books and journals for work, except for that horrible book I’ve been
telling you about, and I’ll spare you the pain.
I will tell you this, though, and it might help you understand why I am
so baffled by so many of today’s “experts.”
The HB (“Horrible Book”) is based on an unconscious (at
least, I hope it’s unconscious)
assumption that you can change fundamental rules of reality at will, just by
getting enough people to go along with it.
This violates the “principle of contradiction,” also known as the “principle
of identity” — two ways of saying the same thing.
The principle of contradiction is that a thing cannot both “be”
and “not be” at the same time. The
principle of identity is, that which is true is as true, and is true in the
same way, as everything else that is true.
While the implications of this principle are profound, the
implications of violating it are even more so, leading to what Venerable Fulton
Sheen called “mental suicide”:
No thesis in the philosophy of St.
Thomas is clearer than that which asserts that all knowledge rests upon a
single first principle. To it all other
principles of thought may be reduced.
Upon it all depend for their validity.
Without it there can be no certitude, but only opinion. Whether we
choose to express this absolute, first principle in the form of an affirmation
— the principle of identity — or in the form of a negation — the principle of
contradiction — it matters not. The
point is, that unless our knowledge hangs upon this basic principle, it is
devoid of certainty. Wherefore,
causality — efficient, formal, material or final — must attach itself in some
manner to the principle of identity. In
the Thomistic view, the connection is immediate. Its very immediateness gives to the notion of
causality the absolute necessity and complete universality of the ultimate
principle.
He who denies causality must ultimately
deny the principle of identity and the principle of contradiction — and this is
mental suicide. It is to assert that that which has not in itself and by itself
its reason of being, is its own reason of being; or, in other words, is and is
not, under the same formal consideration. (Fulton J. Sheen, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy: A
Critical Study in the Light of the Philosophy of Saint Thomas. New York: IVE Press, 2009, 197.)
The Fourth Page
The Geraldines of
Ireland, IX: The End of the Great Earl
In spite of his
efforts at "rehabilitation" and
assistance in forwarding English interests in Ireland, the Great Earl was not
in the highest favor with Henry VII. In addition, Kildare's enemies were
ever-active. He was accused by an Anglo-Irish parliament of conspiring to bring
about the downfall of an expedition against the O'Donnell in October, 1494 by
plotting to assassinate its commander, Sir Edward Poynings, the new Lord
Deputy. He was attainted in December of 1494, and arrested in February, 1495.
Poynings then proceeded to pass legislation that subordinated the Anglo-Irish
parliament to that of England, which effectively made the Irish body completely
redundant, although it was to exist as a kind of gentlemen's club for the
Anglo-Irish squireens until the 1800 Act of Union.
In spite of Poynings' efforts to
assist the Tudor policy of centralization (or, perhaps, because of it), the
disorders in Ireland made it necessary to re-appoint Kildare VIII Lord Deputy
and permit him to return to Ireland in 1496. However, Poynings' legislations
are considered to mark a clear and definite division between medieval Ireland
and the early modern period.
In 1504, the Great Earl found it
necessary to proceed against his own son-in-law, Ulick Burke, who had usurped
the royal town of Galway, and mistreated his wife, Kildare's daughter. Such was
the Great Earl's standing with both the English and the Irish that his summons
was answered by the O'Donnell, the O'Neill, the O'Kelly, the Mayo Burke, as
well as the English of the Pale, the O'Brien of Clanrickard and the chiefs of
Ormond and Connaught. Had he wished, FitzGerald could have taken advantage of
his immense popularity with both races in Ireland and become undisputed king of
Ireland by conquering the Pale without hardly firing a shot, especially since
he had the royal artillery in his possession, and was accustomed to use it as
he pleased.
The Pale, by the way, was a term
also applied to the area around Calais, invaded and held by Edward III in his
bid for the throne of France. Edward asserted this claim based on the fact that
his mother was the sister of the last Capetian king of France. This was a
rather specious claim, for the law of the Salic Franks obtained in France, and,
by that law, no woman could hold the throne or pass on a right to rule. Yet the
English kings continued to claim this right until the early 19th century,
when (in a somewhat contradictory manner) they were, at one and the same time,
asserting a right to the French throne, and attempting to restore the Bourbon
king, Louis XVIII.
The Great Earl met his enemy on 19th August 1504 at Cnoc Taugh near Galway, and the
fighting was so fierce that out of Clanrickard's nine battalions of galloglach, eighteen hundred men, only
the remnant of one battalion came out alive. Kildare VIII entered Galway in
triumph, and the victory was reported to Henry VII as a great one for the
English, although it was simply the termination of a long feud and the crushing
of a rival.
On 3rd September 1513 the Great Earl's long life
ended. He was killed in a petty skirmish with the O'Mores of Leix, while trying
out one of the king's new cannon on them. They returned the favor by shooting
him dead with one of their new muskets. Thus came to an end the high point of
the FitzGeralds of Ireland, though their power was not to disappear until the
Flight of the Earls after the Battle of Kinsale. The Great Earl's career can
probably best be summed up in the words of Edmund Curtis, in his book, A History of Ireland,
Garret More came nearer to being
accepted King of Ireland than any man since the Conquest, and his popularity
lasted for forty years of his rule. He is described as "a mighty man of stature,
full of honor and courage, open and plain, hardly able to rule himself when he
was moved to anger, easily displeased and soon appeased, of the English well
beloved, a good Justiciar, a suppresser of rebels and a warrior
incomparable." Under him, though the union of the two races was not
operated, there was a growing sense of new nationality, and Gaelic chiefs and
old English lords allied and intermarried openly. The influence of the
Renaissance was seen in Ireland in the founding of Kilkenny School by Piers
Butler, in a splendid college in Maynooth, built by the Great Earl, and the
fine library, both of manuscripts and books, that the Earl and his son had in
their Maynooth castle. It was a flowering time also for Gaelic culture which
both races honored, and if Ireland was dominated by a numerous and powerful
aristocracy without a king, at least civilization under them had a noble and
generous character.
The power of the Geraldine had
extended itself over the Pale, and over a large part of Leinster and is
expressed in the Red Book of Kildare,
a great family rental drawn up for Garret More. This power rested on affection
and loyalty as well as on force, and even after the fall of the Geraldines in
1534 a Dublin official could write to Thomas Cromwell: "This English Pale,
except in towns and a few of the possessioners, be so affectionate to the
Geraldine for kindred, marriage, fostering, and adherence, that they covet more
to see a Geraldine to reign and triumph than to see God come among them."
With the reign of Henry VIII, a
new era dawned for Ireland, but not one that promised to be for the better.
Infected with ideas of royal absolutism that were one of the motive forces
behind the Protestant Reformation and the growth of the modern totalitarian
state, a state of Ireland in which the great Norman lords ruled in a condition
of virtual independence was not to his taste. One can only conjecture what
would have been the outcome for Ireland had the policies of Henry VIII been
implemented while the Great Earl was at the height of his powers—quite possibly
an independent, Gaelic Ireland, with the English settlers, no longer able to
rely on Mother England for support and fresh infusions of blood, fully
assimilated within a generation. But the Great Earl was dead, and, while there
were many able men of both races, none had his prestige with all.
Henry VIII's policy of complete
subjugation of Ireland and the dispossession of the great Norman-Irish families
accomplished what centuries of gradual assimilation had failed to do: it
changed them from English to Irish. As Seumas MacManus writes,
…it is…proper to remind readers that
thought they were with fair thoroughness Gaelicised (both in manners and in
blood) these usurpers always retained, in their subconsciousness, memory of the
fact that it was England who had placed them in the seat of the displaced Gael.
And so long as England properly respect their sovereign rights in their
dominion—which should not be theirs—they were in turn willing to respect
England's suzerainty over Ireland in general—and even act as her Deputies. It
is true that, openly or secretly, they hated England with a holy hate—England
and the later English. And they hated English tyranny to the extent of becoming
chronic rebels against England—even when they were nominally serving her. It
was their hatred of England, and resentment of English interference, rather
than the higher principle of Ireland's nationality, that kept them in
rebellion….
The Geraldines were the cream of the sean-Ghall. They were as good as could be expected. But no
better….It was not till newer usurpers robbed them of that which they
themselves had usurped that the sean-Ghall
became flawlessly Irish.
#30#
