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I cannot believe I, an Englishman, am looking with envious eyes and a hopeful heart at Ireland.
Oh right, nevermind. Although I do remember it being widely unpopular? Not that that matters.
So for the unfamiliar, why is Ireland the leader in pushing back against the tide of refugees? What unique facet makes its population so much more willing to resist than other Euro nations? And how to we emulate, amplify and export that factor across the continent?
Regarding the street fights, with the rise of Antifa it didn't take long for right wingers to get violent too. A couple of hundred members of the National Party were attacked at a hotel last year during a conference with an acquaintance of mine being one of 5 hospitalised. Since then everyone knows a confrontation between the far left and right will probably get violent so they come prepared.
Arson has been going on for much longer. I can think of quite a few incidents in relation to this issue in the past few years. If a building has been earmarked for becoming an asylum centre, simply getting rid of the building works pretty well (especially in small towns where that might be the only suitable building for miles around).
A few examples: Kildare, 3 times in Donegal, Leitrim, Dublin.
Yes, 70% of people responded negatively in a public consultation on the law. When questioned, our Taoiseach (prime minister) said that the public consultation was likely swayed by organised groups of dissenters and dismissed it as unrepresentative, when asked why they did the public consultation in the first place if it was so flawed he answered "because this is a democracy" and that public consultations aren't the way things are decided.
I think he is right here. It's useful to know what public opinion is, but it would be a craven politician indeed who dropped a proposed law he believed in just because it wasn't popular. I do have sympathy for a lot of politicians these days because of this; when they follow public opinion at the expense of principle they are called careerists and unprincipled cowards, when they do what they think is right they are accused of being out of touch and ignoring public opinion, you can't win.
Yeah I mean it's a principle of representative democracy that politicians aren't just delegates carrying out their constituents wishes, but representatives with the right to go against the crowd and hopefully be vindicated by the time of the next election.
Still, it's an honest politician that says 'I know you don't like it but here's why we must do it', it's more worrying when they deny the fact that people oppose these policies in the first place, or paint everyone who does as far right (he didn't do that here but they've been using that one more and more).
Again though politicians are only reticent to boldly contradict public opinion and say that they are doing it because the public reaction is/would be so strong. So they always have to try their hardest to at least appear to be in line with public opinion, or at least appear to think they are in line with it, because if they don't even make the effort the electoral cost is so high.
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I’ve thought about this question a lot.
There are a few ways to slice it.
Generally defer to public opinion unless it is an area you feel really strongly on.
Generally keep your own counsel unless public opinion is very much against your position.
Some combo of the above.
I think here, with 70% against, there is a strong argument for No 2.
I suppose there's no correct answer, but once you start sacrificing your own judgement to public opinion you're on a slippery slope; surely the same principle that applies at 55% opposition applies at 70% or even 90%?
No, I think you can easily distinguish. At 55%, it is fair to describes public opinion as mixed with a slight lean. In contrast, at 70% there is a clear preference.
It reminds me of overriding a veto. You only need a bare majority to pass a law but a super majority to override a veto.
In lots of legal systems, there’s actually legal recognition of a difference between 50%+1 and a supermajority for certain purposes, so it’s fair to draw the distinction somewhere as part of democratic principles even if exactly where is arbitrary.
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Ireland has a really long history of ethnically driven non-state violence against outsiders. It's just that other countries with the same history have a GDP of something teen thousand a year, so it doesn't come up because "refugees" don't want to live in the balkans.
Make Croatia wealthy.
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