We can’t stand for dissidents who want to impose their will on us

The American colonies had been at war with Great Britain, in the American Revolutionary War, for over a year before they issued their Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Thomas Jefferson’s masterpiece was not the cause of conflict, but the formal proclamation of independence by the 13 colonies, officially mandated to ratify the democratic wishes of the people.

It’s guiding principle was the ‘consent of the governed’, ‘before’ as well as ‘after’ the fact.

The Irish model differed significantly. First step was the sidelining of the constitutional role models. The pluralist, cosmopolitan constitutionalism of Burke and O’Connell was subsumed into the militant tendency of Wolfe Tone and Pearse.

The Proclamation claimed the allegiance of every Irish man and woman as a right. Think of the implications of that. Instead of the consent of the governed, sovereignty was taken to be embodied in the personages of the rebels themselves, who, like the Provisional IRA in later years, felt ‘entitled’ to absolute allegiance in the fight for freedom.

Moreover, the ‘Rising’ was not a celebration of the Easter resurrection, but was conveniently tied to it. But, even then, the insurrection was so short lived, that the full implications of its dynamically militant soul, with its assumed sovereignty, took time to be realised. But, realised it was, savagely and heartlessly, in the IRA’s campaign of violence.

From their world of assumed sovereignty flowed warped notions of freedom: absolute licence to prosecute the ‘war’ according to their own unpublished ‘constitution’. The attack on the World Trade Centre was a turning point for global terrorism. The Provisionals, and groups like them, knew that their days were numbered.

We were suffused with hope as a massive democratic ‘consent of the people’ routed the forces of terrorists who had enjoyed the diplomatic cover provided by Sinn Féin. How gullible we were,

We are again witnessing dissidents, justifying the struggle for freedom in the language of past imagined glories, while dispensing sovereignty from the barrel of a gun. Small minded people, determined to impose their will on us and stop the peace process in its tracks.

The course of history never did run smooth. But the idea that dissidents who shoot tea ladies or pizza delivery boys, and the idea that these dissidents are anything other than delinquents, is risible. Perhaps, we need to laugh out loud more often and more publicly in the face of such conceit.

Richard Dowling

Patrick St

Mountrath

Co Laois