Litir Scéala, Vol. II.1, No. 12

A chairde —

Right about now you’re probably thinking that “Litir Scéala an tSIG Gaelach is Irish for “Coordinator’s Continuing Excuses.”  Well . . . they’re not excuses.  They’re reasons.

And they’re really good reasons, too.  In real life, I’m Director of Research for the non-profit Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ), which, while more demanding, pays as much as the SIG Coordinator position.

Beannachtai!

Michael

Disclaimers

Opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of individual authors and may not reflect those of other SIG members or the SIG as a whole.  Nothing in this newsletter should be taken as an official position of Mensa.  Mensa as a whole has no opinions.

You have received this newsletter because you either signed up for it on the website of the Irish SIG of American Mensa, or it was forwarded to you.  If you signed up for the monthly newsletter, quarterly publications flyer and occasional announcements but no longer wish to receive them, you may unsubscribe by clicking the link at the end of this newsletter.  If they were forwarded to you, please notify the person who forwarded them that you do not wish to receive the newsletter, quarterly publications flyer or occasional announcements from the Irish SIG.

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Submissions are welcome, but read the guidelines in the “About” section on the website before sending anything.  We will not publish “adult” material, and we interpret that very broadly.  There is no payment for published material.

Breaking News!

 Right after I posted this newsletter, Mr. Chris O'Connor sent us the following link to an article in the Irish Independent.  He couldn't have sent it ten minutes earlier, now, could he. . . .

http://www.independent.ie/business/world/pope-calls-for-world-financial-reform-29272442.html

Note His Holiness's comment regarding the emphasis on consumption, by which Keynesian economics justifies what Jean-Baptiste Say called "barren consumptions." Capital Homesteading focuses on making people productive so that they can consume, rather than on forcing consumption so that other producers can make more profit. The Just Third Way would put money power — and thus economic power — back into the hands of ordinary people where it belongs. Own or be owned!

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 17^th 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, will be having a social tonight at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Little Falls Road in, obviously, Arlington, Virginia.  All are invited . . . although most of you are maybe a little too far away to make it.

• From "Irish News Inc.": "Come enjoy the 27th year of a great fest in your own Chicago Gaelic Park. This is a full day of fun, music and Irish-ness for the price of a pizza!  It's a family affair and includes Gaelic Storm, Ronan Tynan, The Makem and Spain Brothers, Eileen Ivers and Immigrant Soul, The Gothard Sisters, The Fighting Jamesons, Mulligan Stew, The Killdares, Runa, Red Rebel County, Pat Finnegan and Friends, Gerard Haughey and Sean O'Donnell, family fun, rides, theater and much more.
For more info:
http://chicagogaelicparkirishfest.org/
For tickets:
http://chicagogaelicparkirishfest.org/ticket-info/

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

    26 Newsletter Subscribers

    34 Total Circulation, although four of them have not “validated” their subscription (This does not include forwarded newsletters or visitors to the website who have not signed up for the newsletter — over 1,000 to date.)

Letters

Out of the blue last month CESJ’s president, Dr. Norman G. Kurland, was accused in an e-mail of giving a “flippant response” to somebody who asked CESJ a question on something or other.  The accuser refused to present any evidence or even give any details of this heinous offense, even after Norm asked for them so he could apologize.  I, among others, added my demand that the accuser provide something to show that the crime actually occurred, but all I got was to be accused myself of “banning” the accuser from CESJ . . . even though 1) I had done no such thing, and 2) the accuser isn’t even a member of CESJ to be banned.

This caused someone in the U.K. (London) to start ranting and raving about our high crimes and misdemeanors and how the U.S. is fascist, we hate Muslims, how we kick everybody out of our “exclusive” little group, are lunatics, blah, blah.  While none of my best friends are English, I do not think that this particular individual is representative of anything other than a deep personal psychosis, and not the English people as a whole.  At least, I hope not.

The reasons for relating this rather tedious little anecdote is, 1) we don’t have any other letters to report, and 2) we’ve almost finished our response to the Base, Brutal and Bloody Saxon who chimed into the discussion.  We had to put another couple of projects on hold while we did it, but I’ll post a link to the response in the next newsletter.  If you prefer that I don’t, send in your own letters, otherwise you’re stuck with mine.

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.

• The Rally at the Federal Reserve went very well . . . even though (or because) most of it was held at the Lincoln Memorial.  This makes sense, because we are promoting a “Capital Homestead Act,” and it was Lincoln’s 1862 (land) Homestead Act that has been described as the greatest economic initiative in history.  We just need to duplicate that for other forms of capital.

• I found out the day before the Rally that I was giving a talk.  Brief, to be sure, but still. . . . I think I may have let my mouth move up and down for five minutes or so, and I know that some kind of noise was coming out.  I thought I was talking about returning the Federal Reserve to its original purpose of creating money directly in response to the presentation of private sector bills of exchange for rediscounting (everybody’s favorite topic early on a Friday morning), but figured I failed when somebody in the crowd yelled out, “So, you’re just going to print money!”  Noooooooooo!!!!  Money is only supposed to be created (“printed”) by accepting bills of exchange for discounting and rediscounting that have a solid present value based on the future marketable goods and services to be produced.  Don’t you people know anything?

• I attended the annual ESOP Association conference a week ago.  Very interesting, especially the session on seller-financed ESOPs.  A few caveats about being careful not to arrange the transaction so you create “synthetic” or “shadow” equity, but otherwise it duplicated what Equity Expansion International, Inc. (http://www.eei-consultants.com), had worked out to finance a worker buyout when banks aren’t lending.  The possibilities it opens up for a situation like Ireland are . . . I’ll say “interesting.”

Articles

Feature Article: The Housing Crisis

I don’t know if the information is either accurate or up-to-date, but a brother Hibernian who recently returned from Ireland asserted that no new building permits were being issued for private homes until the banks could dispose of their holdings of overpriced inventory.  This seems a little counterproductive, for when goods aren’t selling in the real world, the usual tactic is to reduce the price until the real price on the market is reached.

In any event, there is a solution to the whole housing crisis, and it’s one that no one (except us at CESJ) seems to have considered.  CESJ has developed a proposal that would turn a personal dwelling into a capital good for which pure credit financing would be appropriate.

The “Homeowners Equity Corporation” (HEC) was developed to address the home mortgage crisis.  The crisis was brought about in part by making low-cost credit available for the purchase of personal dwellings, and by creating money for home mortgages instead of confining lending to the pool of existing savings.

The HEC would make interest-free capital credit available for the purchase of personal dwellings, but not in the way Shakespeare demands.  Instead of purchasing a dwelling directly, someone would rent a house from the HEC.

Shares in the HEC equal to the fair market value of the house would be placed in escrow.  A rent sufficient to pay for the shares over a period of years and meet administrative and maintenance costs would be calculated.

This would spread the risk that a single owner has in loss of future income to meet his mortgage.  This is a major problem that led to the 2007 credit crisis from “toxic” home loans.

As the rent payments were made a portion of each rent payment would go to repay the acquisition loan that financed the HEC’s purchase of the house.  Shares equal in value to the principal payment would be released from escrow and put into the renter’s account.

Eventually, a renter would own all the shares put into escrow equal to the value of the house at the time of “purchase.”  At that point, a renter could either exchange the HEC shares for title to the house, or continue as a renter at a much-reduced rent.

A number of variations are possible with the HEC.  For example, someone who exchanges HEC shares for title could enter into a maintenance contract, relieving the homeowner of tedious maintenance tasks.  The HEC could maintain a vacation resort with other HECs, or even be partners in a number of them throughout the world.  HEC shareholders would get favorable rates, but the resorts would be open to all — and the profits would be paid to HEC shareholders or applied to the accelerated purchase of shares.

A tenant could make a zero down payment, or 100%.  Private charity or government vouchers could be provided for people with inadequate incomes.  “ESOP financing” by the HEC would in effect allow a tenant to acquire beneficial ownership of his or her primary residence through direct ownership of shares (along with other tenant-shareholders in the HEC) with “interest-free” money.  Ownership risk would be spread out among many shareholders, offsetting or ameliorating the effect of a decline in the value of a single house.  And so on.

Changing dwellings would be much easier, and much more pleasant.  (Military families would benefit greatly from this, as would retirees.)  A tenant in temporary financial difficulties could negotiate for reduced payments covering only current administrative costs and maintenance, with a temporary moratorium on principal payments.  At worst, cashing in a portion of HEC shares to go back into escrow would be far more advantageous and certainly less risky than a single individual’s home equity loan or a reverse mortgage.

And so on.  The bottom line is that it is completely unnecessary to deviate from the common sense principle that all capital assets pay for themselves with their own earnings.  By making it possible for tenants to own the company that owns the house, a HEC turns a personal residence into a capital asset for the HEC, while the use is rented to a tenant who just happens to be a shareholder of the HEC that owns the house.  A tenant would not be released from the obligation to make rent payments simply because he or she is a HEC shareholder.

The same concept could be applied to other consumer durables, such as automobiles and even bicycles, and, in fact, has been in some places.  The need is not so critical as it is with housing, however, and it can be left to private initiative.  The concept cannot be applied to education (below), because you cannot rent an education, but (at least in theory) it could be applied to anything that can be rented.

Food

Lentil Salad

This uses green lentils, which is close enough to Irish when I’m in a hurry.

1 lb dried lentils

1 thinly sliced yellow onion

1 pint salad dressing, preferably homemade, half oil, half vinegar, and whatever spices you want.

Cook the lentils.  Lentils don’t take anywhere near as long as other dried beans, so be careful not to overcook.  Drain the lentils in a colander.  Put them in a bowl.  Add the onions and salad dressing.  Put in a glass jar and let sit in the refrigerator at least overnight.

Reviews

This isn’t so much a review of a book, as it is of an author: G. K. Chesterton.  In his Autobiography, Chesterton said a number of very nice things about William Butler Yeats, whose poetry I assume you’ve read.  That’s not much of a segue, but it’s all I’ve got to bring in the subject that Chesterton himself seemed to think was somehow important: the death of reason.

Reading the tripe that comes out of today’s Professional Chestertonians and neo-distributists, you’d never guess that, on occasion, Chesterton might actually have said something that didn’t support State socialism or other forms of idiocy; that he was, in fact, something more than a genial buffoon more interested in wit than in reason.

If, however, we start reading what Chesterton wrote between 1933 when he published his biographical sketch of St. Thomas Aquinas, and 1936 when he died, we run the risk of coming to a far different conclusion.  In Chapter XI of his autobiography, “The Shadow of the Sword,” which Chesterton opened by recounting the story of the Beaconsfield War Memorial.  The question before a committee of citizens was whether or not to erect a cross at the crossroads.  The goal was to commemorate the sacrifices made by local members of the military during the Great War.

The “common” people of the more-than-a-village-but-less-than-a-suburb of Beaconsfield were divided on the issue.  Some liked the idea of a cross because it was Christian.  Others disliked the idea because a cross seemed a bit too suggestive of a crucifix and thus might be considered papistical.

Rather than debate the merits of cross/no-cross, however, the committee droned on at great length about other things entirely.  They discussed a wide range of subjects covering pretty much everything except whether or not to have a cross erected.

Evidently a little frustrated, Chesterton slightly misquoted the Mister Bingley character from Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice on the subject of balls versus rational conversation.  The “Apostle of Common Sense” pointed out that, while all the alternatives discussed were very worthy in their way, even laudable, none of them really were very much like war memorials.

Chesterton used his anecdote to illustrate the difficulties of getting people to recognize aims and goals.  Unless we keep the reason we are doing something before our eyes at all times (so to speak), we run the risk of getting diverted.

Losing sight of that, the means becomes more important than the end.  Then the focus shifts to the means to achieve the means.  Finally we forget precisely why we are clubbing our fellow man to death.

The only thing we know for certain is that he has committed the ultimate crime of disagreeing with us.  Nor was the disagreement anything substantive.  It was just over the means to achieve the means to achieve the means to get to the discussion to achieve the means.

The process is, in every sense of the word, “endless,” being both interminable and without a goal or ultimate purpose.  It is also a striking characteristic of the modern age, that has replaced what Chesterton called the great and glorious sport of argument and debate, with sordid quarreling over any trivial detail that can give someone a victory — all the while turning the only thing that matters, truth itself, into a triviality.  As Chesterton observed (and keep in mind that he was writing in the early 1930s),

[T]here are many who do not understand the nature of any sort of argument.  Indeed, I think there are fewer people now alive who understand argument than there were twenty or thirty years ago; . . . [Most men] have not time to argue.  No time, that is, to argue fairly.  There is always time to argue unfairly; not least in a time like ours. . . . [I]t is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer.  That is why, in recent literature, there has been so little argument and so much sneering.

The Fourth Page

The Geraldines of Ireland, XI: The Beginning of the End of the Kildares

Perhaps the most famous example of "Perfidious Albion" remains the Treaty of Limerick. Memory of it would provide the battle cry of the Irish mercenaries in exile on the continent throughout the eighteenth century whenever they fought English troops. As one instance, the Treaty of Limerick inspired the French victory at the British debacle of the Battle of Fontenoy, during the War of Austrian Succession. The Irish Brigade in the service of the King of France saved the day with their last-hope charge against the nearly-victorious allied English and Austrian army. The Brigade rallied from a general retreat by shouting, Cuimhnigidh ar Liumneac, agus ar fheile na Sacsanach, "Remember Limerick and Saxon Faith." The Allied forces were under the command of the Duke of Cumberland, a younger son of George II. He was later to avenge his defeat at the hands of the Irish and earn the sobriquet "Butcher Cumberland," by slaughtering the supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden on Wednesday, April 16, 1746.

Recent English historians have attempted to downplay the role that the Irish Brigade played in the victory, but the Maréchal de Saxe, the French Commander in Chief, gave all credit to the Irish, and Louis XV, upon reviewing the troops after the battle, singled out the Irish Brigade for signal praise. Receiving a report of the terrible defeat inflicted on the English by the Irish Brigade, George II is reported to have groaned, "Cursed be the laws that deprive me of such subjects!"

The story behind such resentment over Limerick is simple. In 1690, during the Williamite wars (and, as Samuel Johnson points out, before William had been accepted as king of Ireland by the Anglo-Irish Parliament) the Limerick garrison surrendered to the English. This was only on two conditions. The first and most important was that the civil and religious liberties of Irish Catholics granted under Charles II be secured. These, it should be noted, were in no wise comparable or equal to the civil and religious liberties held by Protestant Englishmen of the same period, or even by Protestant Irish. The Irish Catholic would, under this arrangement, remain a second-class citizen. The second condition was that the garrison would either leave the country or join the Williamite army. As it happened, less than ten per cent. of the Irish chose to accept enlistment under William of Orange as the price of remaining in their homeland.

The Treaty of Limerick became a byword for absolute and utter contempt for the pledged word of a nation. The fact that Ireland would very likely have become independent had the Irish commander, Patrick Sarsfield, Lord Lucan, gone back on his own word to surrender, given two days before French aid arrived. Instead, Sarsfield kept his word, and ordered the French to leave and adhere to the terms of the treaty. The English, however, having obtained everything they wanted by relying on the honor of the Irish, had no such qualms about dishonoring the agreement and sullying England's name once again. Every provision of the treaty was violated before the ink was scarcely dry, and additional disabilities against Catholics were added to those formerly on the statute books, which had been removed by Charles II (one of the reasons for his great unpopularity with the rich and powerful).

However, this was in the future, and Silken Thomas probably did not suspect that his own royal cousin would so abuse his given word. Although of noble, even royal, blood (of a sort, being Henry's own cousin, once removed), and thus "entitled" to a dignified and relatively merciful decapitation, Thomas was subjected to the barbarity of being hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn in 1537. A. M. Sullivan, in his The Story of Ireland for Young and Old, maintains that the young FitzGerald was beheaded, but the fact that the execution took place at Tyburn confirms death by the usual method reserved for traitors of "common" blood. This involved a partial hanging and the further torture of being cut down while half-strangled and still alive, being disemboweled, and forcing the victim to watch while his own intestines were burned in front of him before expiring, then having his body cut into four pieces, parboiled, and sent to the four corners of the kingdom for display over the gates of prominent towns.

Executed with Thomas, in an attempt to exterminate the entire family of the FitzGeralds of Kildare, were his five uncles, who were also relatives of Henry, being Thomas's father's half-brothers. Three of these men had taken no part at all in Thomas's rebellion, saving only to advise him against it. The other two had actually assisted in suppressing the revolt, but paid the price of being guilty on at least three counts: getting in the way of Henry VIII's bloodthirsty paranoia, being Henry's own Irish relatives, and suffering from complete innocence of the charges brought against them. They were seized at a banquet to which they had been invited by the new English Lord Deputy, ostensibly to thank them for their loyalty and assistance in putting down the rebellion. Of course, it probably didn't help that these men were also devout Catholics, and not completely enthusiastic about Henry's new religion. Imitating the degraded familial purges carried out by Caligula and Nero, a number of Henry's other relatives, including a senile aunt in her nineties (the Dowager Countess of Salisbury), in addition to his own childhood tutor (shades of Seneca, Nero's tutor), would also pay the price of their connection to a sociopath and their adherence to the old faith.

Even the Butlers, the Earls of Ormond, solid Lancastrians, English to the core and ancient enemies of the FitzGeralds, were horrified at Henry's display of savagery. James "The Lame" Butler, the tenth Earl of Ormond (MacManus again makes a mistake in numbering and refers to him as the ninth earl), wept openly when the butchery at Tyburn was related to him. Ormond X was distantly related to the victims, being the son of "Magheen" FitzGerald, the daughter of the Great Earl himself, and Pierce Butler, the loyal Lancastrian and ninth Earl of Ormond.

James Butler was married to Joan FitzGerald, daughter of James FitzGerald, the tenth Earl of Desmond (not the eleventh, as MacManus states). All of this, no doubt, helped convince the last of the English Anglo-Irish Lords of the distastefulness of remaining English and assisted in his gaelicisation. He was to pay for this later, when, after the death of the tenth Earl of Desmond, he claimed the Earldom, which would have made him virtual ruler of the whole of Southern Ireland. Henry VIII had James Butler invited to a dinner in London in 1550, where his entire retinue of fifty took sick, and eighteen people, counting the Earl, died. Poison was "suspected," some accusing Henry and his Lord Deputy, others the Earl of Northumberland, "a rare poisoner."

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