"The activist group The Countess, which campaigns for womens’ rights in Ireland, is doing an excellent, if sometimes lonely, job of explaining just how the state is attempting in this referendum to con women out of their constitutional rights, while pretending to do the opposite. As they point out in a detailed argument against the proposed changes, the 1937 constitution does not oblige women to stay at home. Rather, as the wording makes clear, it protects them if they choose to do so."
Don't you understand? This sort of thing prevents rich people from making more money.
As you alluded, economics is the most salient driving factor behind the collapse of Old Ireland. If Marx teaches us nothing else, he teaches us that everything is downstream from technology (what is possible) and economics (what choices are feasible). Thing is, he accurately describes the bloodless way in which The Real World actually works.
If Christ is opposed to Marx, it is that He see humans as something other than means to an end, NPCs to be deployed when they're useful in achieving some goal and discarded when they're not, but as an end in and of themselves.
A great post Paul, and what The Machine hates most of all, because it really is the final barrier against its total domination and control of every aspect of our lives, is marriage and the family.
I recently discovered the Catholic priest Fr Chad Ripperger, whose Youtube videos I find utterly compelling. He’s woken me up to many things, not least the reality of the demonic in his role as an exorcist - but also to the fact that any primary focus by politicians on the economy is in fact an iteration of Communism, whatever their apparent political party.
I had never understood it this way before, but of course it’s true, and the truth of it these days is becoming clearer by the month. Any non-Communist government would focus on the genuine welfare of the people beyond the merely material, and beyond Capitalism’s - and Communism’s - relentless need to regularise, standardise, streamline, reduce choice under the pretence of widening it.
Thanks for writing this, Paul. I'm at my wit's end explaining to friends how we're being sold a neoiberal pig-in-a-poke. One online commentator opined, If she could vote to remove the word "family", she would. We love our new priests in this island.
I can only hope that the incompetent arrogance of the current government may save mothers in the end. The proposed replacement language does such a ham-fisted job regarding "carers" that vocal opposition from Disabled Rights activists may truimph were appeals to motherhood won't.
I think many people misread the events of the 70’s which led us to the complete destruction of motherhood and home life. Here in America we were in a cycle of inflation and high energy costs which made it necessary for many women to leave home for part time work as cashiers, sales clerks, waitresses. These were not careers, and were not freely chosen paths to liberation, they were imposed by hard times. Our governments became addicted, as they always do, to the extra tax income, and suddenly the entire media machine turned as with a single focus to the glamorous career woman. The Mary Tyler Moore Show and many drearier spin offs showed just what you were missing out on as a stay at home mom, fun, friends, advancement, romance. Magazines screamed from the check out stands the same message.
Everyone seemed to forget that their fathers, often without a high school education, had been able to marry, buy a home, and raise a family, often quite large and even college educated, on one income. That this represented a loss in real terms of wealth occurred to no one.
There was a book back in the spate of simple living books 20 years or so ago that was tilted Graceful Simplicity. The premise was that the really good life requires someone in the home whose full time duty is to care for it and the people in it. Now the author was a Quaker, sufficiently woke for his times to insist that this didn’t have to be the woman, but admitted that it often worked best if it was. This seems an irreducible fact to me, after 42 years of being that person. To provide an actual safe space, as opposed to the fake “safe spaces” of the world, a home in which comfort, food, warmth, clean clothes, homemade meals and handcrafted goods pleasing to the eye and soul are in abundance is the work of an artist, and artists do not work part time at their art. It is to provide a kind of security that is vanishing, and which cannot be reproduced or procured for any amount of money because it is a work of love. This is a lifestyle now reserved only to the upper middle classes, formerly so commonplace as to be taken for granted.
Modern progressive women portray the Church's sexual teachings as misogynistic and patriarchal, but women in the ancient world found those same teachings liberating, even protective. In a world where women were effectively property, Christianity was a ray of light for them. Edward Watt's Final Pagan Generation is a tome, but this point comes through loudly: the pagan world was horrible for women and girls. And they saw Christianity as a better way. Imagine how terrible your pagan life has to be to think risking being fed to lions or lit on fire as a human torch is an improvement.
As the modern world abandons Christianity, we are already seeing it re-embrace pagan practices around sexuality and transgression. Some are being more explicit in their paganism (https://religionnews.com/2024/02/21/ex-catholics-in-rome-reconnect-with-roots-spirituality-in-paganism/ -- this is seriously dangerous BTW, these people are unknowingly summoning demons.) The protected place give to women and children is simply the latest casualty of this re-paganization of the West. Like everything else that sprang from Christianity, it will gradually fall away as people forget why it ever existed. "Women and children first" only makes sense in a world that knows women and men are different and that values children and families.
"in particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved."
Can the idea of "the common good" even exist in modern West? The highest good in modern, Western culture is maximal individual autonomy (thanks J.S. Mill.). If that's the only thing your society holds sacred, is it even possible to have a "common good"? Sans a collective definition of "good" or "virtue" ( which modern liberalism rejects in the name of maximal individual autonomy) what does "the common good" even mean? I would love to hear a progressive try and defend the idea.
This move is a reiteration of the Machine's attitude toward human life. There are no fathers or mothers, only parents and coparents, of any number, temporary or indefinite, who may or may not have personal relationships with each other. If the act of parenthood is a construct, inserting the state into this role or to being the ultimate authority on pediatric welfare becomes trivially easy. When the human person is reduced to an economic object, the act of raising children becomes a financial calculus: can the autonomous individual "afford" to take on the expense called "having kids," that is, can they do so without hampering their financial goals and ability to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle? What sort of children will become productive members of society, that is, which children are investments that are projected to yield a high ROI, and which are burdens on society, costs to be cut? At what age does the depreciation of an individual's economic potential reach the critical point where their maintenance expenses exceed their productive capacity? And so on.
Yes, you are about to find out. Here in Canada children can transition sex without their parents consent, they can get vaccinated without their parents consent and in the future will be able to end their lives through our Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID, what a diabolical acronym) without their parents consent, even if they are mentally ill. Now the state raises our children. I have heard of one father who refused to support his 13 year old’s transition and was thrown in jail. My prayers go out to all parents raising young children in this world today.
As to motherhood, I remember getting part time work in retail years ago. I trudged from one big box store to another filling out applications. There were several questions that always gave me the opportunity to elevate motherhood to its true position and I took full advantage of the opportunity. One was “occupation” in which I proudly recorded the words Housewife and Mother. The second was Work Experience in which I delighted to always ask for an extra piece of paper in which to scrawl my comprehensive list. And the last question Post Secondary Education into which I gleefully wrote, in all caps, NONE. To be honest, my job search became more like missionary work and I really couldn’t care less if I got the job or not:) I saved my list and turned it into a poem. It really didn’t need any editing, there were no superfluous words and when I stood back and looked at it I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the privilege of such a calling. Of course there are many things absent from the list, but I felt to include them was bordering on narcissism:)
Resume
Housewife/Mother
Retail sales
Florist
Baker
Cheese maker
Horticulturalist
Arborist
Landscaper
Animal Behavioural expert
Renewable Resource Manager
Teacher
Fibre artist
Poet
Interior designer
Construction worker
Chef
Survivalist
Butcher
Candlemaker
Event planner
Musician
Gardener
Guidance counsellor
Herbalist
Fashion designer
Debater
Child psychologist
Dog trainer
Massage therapist
Teamster
Sheep shearer
Horse trainer
Philosopher
Secondary Education - NONE
This list stands in defiance to the eradication of our most precious and sacred family.
Wendell Berry is excellent on this topic, defending men as well as women: "And what are we to say of the diversely skilled country housewife who now bores the same six holes day after day on an assembly line? What higher form of womanhood or humanity is she evolving toward? How, I am asking, can women improve themselves by submitting to the same specialization, degradation, trivialization, and tyrannization of work that men have submitted to? And that question is made legitimate by another: How have men improved themselves by submitting to it? The answer is that men have not, and women cannot, improve themselves by submitting to it."
This was a great article. The recent events in Ireland are extremely sad. And i don’t think Catholic Integralism will ever get off the ground in the US. But here in the US, we are so childlike and gullible than no constitutional change has been necessary to enact a policy for families and our culture that is run by “the Machine.” It was done by media, by college elites, and I suppose ultimately by a “for profit only to the already rich” group of societal controllers to push women into the work force, boosting inflation enough that those women would be trapped there forever.
I am 68 years old. I married young, had 8 sons, stayed home and looked after them. This was out of the ordinary even in my day. But I was a traditionalist who, like de Valera, has become more traditional, more Catholic, more cognizant of the evils of progressivism as I have grown older. People have said to me, you must have been economically privileged. No, if they only knew how poor we were! I was determined though. I knew I would quit my stenographer job when I became pregnant with our first child. I knew I would never in a million years let someone else raise my child. I knew this when I was twenty years old. The money didn’t balance on paper. But so what? And we even bought a house at this time. We made it. Our children are all grown and they are making it too. Doing better than we did. Our sons have good jobs, most own acreage and a home. Number 34 grandchild is due this year. None of my daughters in law who are mothers, work outside their homes.
At our book club last month, mothers were talking about how you have to be committed to poverty if you want to have a large family and stay home with them. Maybe that’s true. But it’s so worth it. Oh young woman-its so worth it!
I wish I could live under such a protection as the constitution offered women in Ireland! What a definition of freedom - protection for carrying out the important field of householding. Beautiful. (And sad, that the machine is now to eat it. Yet, the words inspired.)
Ireland is now, probably not a good name for the island next to Britain. That name is "problematic." Maybe, they should change it to, here goes "Euro Area Green." It rolls off the tongue really well and would fit into some line of code too. This new country will be a land fit for machines and no mothers are needed for machines.
As George Grant opined in Technology and Empire (1969), “The directors of General Motors and the followers of Professor (Herbert) Marcuse sail down the same river in different boats.”
Is there a mean streak in the Irish which could be argued is not the fault of Catholicism or Progressivism? The Irish killed Michael Collins didn't they, not the British? Maybe, there is a wild tendancy to take things too far, which could produce saints or alcoholics. In the machine age, everyone is drunk all of the time under the delerium of technology and Ireland is so drunk it is getting rid of itself.
"The activist group The Countess, which campaigns for womens’ rights in Ireland, is doing an excellent, if sometimes lonely, job of explaining just how the state is attempting in this referendum to con women out of their constitutional rights, while pretending to do the opposite. As they point out in a detailed argument against the proposed changes, the 1937 constitution does not oblige women to stay at home. Rather, as the wording makes clear, it protects them if they choose to do so."
Don't you understand? This sort of thing prevents rich people from making more money.
As you alluded, economics is the most salient driving factor behind the collapse of Old Ireland. If Marx teaches us nothing else, he teaches us that everything is downstream from technology (what is possible) and economics (what choices are feasible). Thing is, he accurately describes the bloodless way in which The Real World actually works.
If Christ is opposed to Marx, it is that He see humans as something other than means to an end, NPCs to be deployed when they're useful in achieving some goal and discarded when they're not, but as an end in and of themselves.
A great post Paul, and what The Machine hates most of all, because it really is the final barrier against its total domination and control of every aspect of our lives, is marriage and the family.
All this brings to mind Satan’s pedigree.
He is a liar and murderer.
I recently discovered the Catholic priest Fr Chad Ripperger, whose Youtube videos I find utterly compelling. He’s woken me up to many things, not least the reality of the demonic in his role as an exorcist - but also to the fact that any primary focus by politicians on the economy is in fact an iteration of Communism, whatever their apparent political party.
I had never understood it this way before, but of course it’s true, and the truth of it these days is becoming clearer by the month. Any non-Communist government would focus on the genuine welfare of the people beyond the merely material, and beyond Capitalism’s - and Communism’s - relentless need to regularise, standardise, streamline, reduce choice under the pretence of widening it.
Thanks for writing this, Paul. I'm at my wit's end explaining to friends how we're being sold a neoiberal pig-in-a-poke. One online commentator opined, If she could vote to remove the word "family", she would. We love our new priests in this island.
I can only hope that the incompetent arrogance of the current government may save mothers in the end. The proposed replacement language does such a ham-fisted job regarding "carers" that vocal opposition from Disabled Rights activists may truimph were appeals to motherhood won't.
I think many people misread the events of the 70’s which led us to the complete destruction of motherhood and home life. Here in America we were in a cycle of inflation and high energy costs which made it necessary for many women to leave home for part time work as cashiers, sales clerks, waitresses. These were not careers, and were not freely chosen paths to liberation, they were imposed by hard times. Our governments became addicted, as they always do, to the extra tax income, and suddenly the entire media machine turned as with a single focus to the glamorous career woman. The Mary Tyler Moore Show and many drearier spin offs showed just what you were missing out on as a stay at home mom, fun, friends, advancement, romance. Magazines screamed from the check out stands the same message.
Everyone seemed to forget that their fathers, often without a high school education, had been able to marry, buy a home, and raise a family, often quite large and even college educated, on one income. That this represented a loss in real terms of wealth occurred to no one.
There was a book back in the spate of simple living books 20 years or so ago that was tilted Graceful Simplicity. The premise was that the really good life requires someone in the home whose full time duty is to care for it and the people in it. Now the author was a Quaker, sufficiently woke for his times to insist that this didn’t have to be the woman, but admitted that it often worked best if it was. This seems an irreducible fact to me, after 42 years of being that person. To provide an actual safe space, as opposed to the fake “safe spaces” of the world, a home in which comfort, food, warmth, clean clothes, homemade meals and handcrafted goods pleasing to the eye and soul are in abundance is the work of an artist, and artists do not work part time at their art. It is to provide a kind of security that is vanishing, and which cannot be reproduced or procured for any amount of money because it is a work of love. This is a lifestyle now reserved only to the upper middle classes, formerly so commonplace as to be taken for granted.
Modern progressive women portray the Church's sexual teachings as misogynistic and patriarchal, but women in the ancient world found those same teachings liberating, even protective. In a world where women were effectively property, Christianity was a ray of light for them. Edward Watt's Final Pagan Generation is a tome, but this point comes through loudly: the pagan world was horrible for women and girls. And they saw Christianity as a better way. Imagine how terrible your pagan life has to be to think risking being fed to lions or lit on fire as a human torch is an improvement.
As the modern world abandons Christianity, we are already seeing it re-embrace pagan practices around sexuality and transgression. Some are being more explicit in their paganism (https://religionnews.com/2024/02/21/ex-catholics-in-rome-reconnect-with-roots-spirituality-in-paganism/ -- this is seriously dangerous BTW, these people are unknowingly summoning demons.) The protected place give to women and children is simply the latest casualty of this re-paganization of the West. Like everything else that sprang from Christianity, it will gradually fall away as people forget why it ever existed. "Women and children first" only makes sense in a world that knows women and men are different and that values children and families.
"in particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved."
Can the idea of "the common good" even exist in modern West? The highest good in modern, Western culture is maximal individual autonomy (thanks J.S. Mill.). If that's the only thing your society holds sacred, is it even possible to have a "common good"? Sans a collective definition of "good" or "virtue" ( which modern liberalism rejects in the name of maximal individual autonomy) what does "the common good" even mean? I would love to hear a progressive try and defend the idea.
This move is a reiteration of the Machine's attitude toward human life. There are no fathers or mothers, only parents and coparents, of any number, temporary or indefinite, who may or may not have personal relationships with each other. If the act of parenthood is a construct, inserting the state into this role or to being the ultimate authority on pediatric welfare becomes trivially easy. When the human person is reduced to an economic object, the act of raising children becomes a financial calculus: can the autonomous individual "afford" to take on the expense called "having kids," that is, can they do so without hampering their financial goals and ability to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle? What sort of children will become productive members of society, that is, which children are investments that are projected to yield a high ROI, and which are burdens on society, costs to be cut? At what age does the depreciation of an individual's economic potential reach the critical point where their maintenance expenses exceed their productive capacity? And so on.
Yes, you are about to find out. Here in Canada children can transition sex without their parents consent, they can get vaccinated without their parents consent and in the future will be able to end their lives through our Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID, what a diabolical acronym) without their parents consent, even if they are mentally ill. Now the state raises our children. I have heard of one father who refused to support his 13 year old’s transition and was thrown in jail. My prayers go out to all parents raising young children in this world today.
As to motherhood, I remember getting part time work in retail years ago. I trudged from one big box store to another filling out applications. There were several questions that always gave me the opportunity to elevate motherhood to its true position and I took full advantage of the opportunity. One was “occupation” in which I proudly recorded the words Housewife and Mother. The second was Work Experience in which I delighted to always ask for an extra piece of paper in which to scrawl my comprehensive list. And the last question Post Secondary Education into which I gleefully wrote, in all caps, NONE. To be honest, my job search became more like missionary work and I really couldn’t care less if I got the job or not:) I saved my list and turned it into a poem. It really didn’t need any editing, there were no superfluous words and when I stood back and looked at it I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the privilege of such a calling. Of course there are many things absent from the list, but I felt to include them was bordering on narcissism:)
Resume
Housewife/Mother
Retail sales
Florist
Baker
Cheese maker
Horticulturalist
Arborist
Landscaper
Animal Behavioural expert
Renewable Resource Manager
Teacher
Fibre artist
Poet
Interior designer
Construction worker
Chef
Survivalist
Butcher
Candlemaker
Event planner
Musician
Gardener
Guidance counsellor
Herbalist
Fashion designer
Debater
Child psychologist
Dog trainer
Massage therapist
Teamster
Sheep shearer
Horse trainer
Philosopher
Secondary Education - NONE
This list stands in defiance to the eradication of our most precious and sacred family.
Wendell Berry is excellent on this topic, defending men as well as women: "And what are we to say of the diversely skilled country housewife who now bores the same six holes day after day on an assembly line? What higher form of womanhood or humanity is she evolving toward? How, I am asking, can women improve themselves by submitting to the same specialization, degradation, trivialization, and tyrannization of work that men have submitted to? And that question is made legitimate by another: How have men improved themselves by submitting to it? The answer is that men have not, and women cannot, improve themselves by submitting to it."
This was a great article. The recent events in Ireland are extremely sad. And i don’t think Catholic Integralism will ever get off the ground in the US. But here in the US, we are so childlike and gullible than no constitutional change has been necessary to enact a policy for families and our culture that is run by “the Machine.” It was done by media, by college elites, and I suppose ultimately by a “for profit only to the already rich” group of societal controllers to push women into the work force, boosting inflation enough that those women would be trapped there forever.
I am 68 years old. I married young, had 8 sons, stayed home and looked after them. This was out of the ordinary even in my day. But I was a traditionalist who, like de Valera, has become more traditional, more Catholic, more cognizant of the evils of progressivism as I have grown older. People have said to me, you must have been economically privileged. No, if they only knew how poor we were! I was determined though. I knew I would quit my stenographer job when I became pregnant with our first child. I knew I would never in a million years let someone else raise my child. I knew this when I was twenty years old. The money didn’t balance on paper. But so what? And we even bought a house at this time. We made it. Our children are all grown and they are making it too. Doing better than we did. Our sons have good jobs, most own acreage and a home. Number 34 grandchild is due this year. None of my daughters in law who are mothers, work outside their homes.
At our book club last month, mothers were talking about how you have to be committed to poverty if you want to have a large family and stay home with them. Maybe that’s true. But it’s so worth it. Oh young woman-its so worth it!
I wish I could live under such a protection as the constitution offered women in Ireland! What a definition of freedom - protection for carrying out the important field of householding. Beautiful. (And sad, that the machine is now to eat it. Yet, the words inspired.)
Thank you for sharing, and blessings from Sweden!
Ireland is now, probably not a good name for the island next to Britain. That name is "problematic." Maybe, they should change it to, here goes "Euro Area Green." It rolls off the tongue really well and would fit into some line of code too. This new country will be a land fit for machines and no mothers are needed for machines.
As George Grant opined in Technology and Empire (1969), “The directors of General Motors and the followers of Professor (Herbert) Marcuse sail down the same river in different boats.”
Thank you for this. I found it very interesting valuable. I agree with all of your basic and fundamental principles
Is there a mean streak in the Irish which could be argued is not the fault of Catholicism or Progressivism? The Irish killed Michael Collins didn't they, not the British? Maybe, there is a wild tendancy to take things too far, which could produce saints or alcoholics. In the machine age, everyone is drunk all of the time under the delerium of technology and Ireland is so drunk it is getting rid of itself.