‘PATRIOTISM IS THE LAST REFUGE OF A SCOUNDREL’ by Donal Kennedy

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” said Dr. Johnson.

Two hundred or so years later my late father reckoned Johnson got it wrong. He reckoned religion (or a pretence of it) was the last refuge. I suspect though that religion is often the FIRST refuge of scoundrels.

It certainly appears to be a refuge for the humbugs whose thoughts on the 1916 Rising appear under the heading Rite and Reason in THE IRISH TIMES. Trite and treasonable pieces, in my humble opinion.

The latest contributor (January 12) lives in California, a territory which, together with Texas, was stolen from Mexico in a war of 1846, described by a US soldier involved in it, Ulysses S Grant as “the most unjust war ever waged by one country on another.” Grant went on to be US President in a capital city named after a slave-holding rebel against his lawful sovereign, a rebel who was probably saved from the hangman’s noose by the arrival of gallant allies from Europe. The  first draft of the US Declaration of Independence referred to “life, liberty and the enjoyment of property.” Dr Johnson observed that the most vociferous American cries of “liberty” came from those whose main property consisted of black slaves. When appealing to the conscience of mankind the Founding Fathers thought “the Pursuit of Happiness” was a more politic sound-bite. And when the Americans got round to establishing a Constitution, slaveholders were involved in drafting it so that they could continue their enjoyment of their property. The American Republic was established on a very restricted franchise, and during its War  of Independence it is reckoned that one-third of the the population supported it, one third opposed it and another third was indifferent. When it was won the winners were not kindly disposed towards King George’s loyal supporters, many of whom sought refuge in Canada. Hamar Greenwood, Britain’s Chief Secretary for Ireland during the Black and Tan War was a Canadian whose Tory ancestors fled the United States for Canada following the British defeat at Yorktown. Perhaps the brutality and dishonesty  of his regime was a way of avenging ancestors chased out of America by American “rebels.”

The correspondent in California is an Irish Jesuit Priest, Seamus Murphy. He says of the 1916 Rising that, “not having a realistic prospect of success”, it did not pass the “just war” criteria, but that we can “laughingly forgive a gloriously hopeless battle.”  It seems to me that the insurgents were over-brimming with faith and charity. Their faith was in the essential commonsense of the Irish people in whom they had not lost hope, their charity was in hazarding their lives in their enterprise, and the mass of the Irish people responded to those three divine virtues.

Father Murphy says a real republic is created by voters and established in structures of representative democracy. I wonder when the United States became a real republic by his criteria. But I doubt Jefferson, Washington or Alexander Hamilton were so minded.

I can’t  “laughingly forgive” Father Murphy’s assertion that “to celebrate the Rising is to celebrate anti-democratic elitism and bloodlust.”

On 11 May 1916, the day before his troops shot the prisoners James Connolly and Sean MacDiarmada, British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith told the House of Commons that the “rebels” fought a clean fight. What evidence has since come to light to support Father Murphy’s sneering insults?

Poor Daniel O’Connell seems to be invoked by many humbugs. A man who died on pilgrimage to Rome and left his heart to it has been invoked by anti-Catholic pseudo- secularists. He has been hailed as a Liberator, a European Bolivar, despite Bolivar’s successful  employment of the sword in pursuit of liberty and O’Connell’s rejection of that weapon and failure to liberate Ireland.

Father Murphy tells us that O’Connell never shot anybody.  That’s news to me. The tragedy of O’Connell, whose mass mobilisation of an unarmed people was set at naught by British Guns and so dispirited them they allowed vast amounts of food to be exported under guard of British guns.

They had been let down, not just by O’Connell’s futile leadership, but also by the rotting of their potatoes, otherwise known as Murphies.