Connect:Endorsing sentiments expressed hours earlier by Pope Benedict XVI, Bertie Ahern said in a New Year address: "Throughout our history Ireland has demonstrated by word and deed our commitment to the due dignity of the individual." Really? "Throughout our history . . . the due dignity of the individual?" Let's consider this.
Despite that egregious "throughout our history", the Taoiseach was probably referring to this State since independence. But considering huge families, emigration, treatment of unmarried mothers, sold babies, industrial schools, Magdalene laundries, sexual abuse, fundamentalist censorship, financial plunderers, two-tier health and education services, and an absurd PAYE tax burden, the due dignity of the individual does not appear best catered for - even within such a random list.
Then there's the historic place of the family in the Constitution. Prioritising the family means, by definition, less emphasis on individuals. The damage families do - inadvertently and deliberately - to individuals is notorious. "They f**k you up, your Mum and Dad,/ They may not mean to but they do," went Philip Larkin's 1971 poem, This Be The Verse.
How terribly true! Strangely, Bertie Ahern's latest platitude sounds as cavalier as his past declaration that he is a "socialist". You might expect a socialist to emphasise communal aspects of society over individual ones. Not Bertie Ahern, however - he has typically chosen to try to be all things to all people, stressing individuality when it suits him and communality at other times.
Perhaps it doesn't matter anymore that so many public people speak in vague, meaningless platitudes. So Bertie Ahern, arguably like a true postmodernist, one day supports communal values and another day emphasises individual ones. Clearly, he is a very individualistic socialist indeed. The question arises however: why do we listen so passively to such blather? Maybe we've grown used to people not telling it like it is. Yet it's hardly good enough when the State's most powerful politician contradicts himself. Should Bertie Ahern not be challenged to say precisely what he means when he describes himself as a socialist with a commitment to the due dignity of the individual? Of course he should. Words, after all, must have some meaning.
Mind you, Pope Benedict XVI, in his New Year homily in St Peter's Basilica in Rome, described peace as a "gift to invoke with prayer, a task to carry out with courage, without ever tiring". Peace, he added, can only be achieved if individuals' human rights are respected. He stressed that there can be no excuse for treating people as "objects".
He's right that there can be no excuse for treating people as objects. That is the road to dehumanisation and evil. He's doing a Bertie, however, when he describes peace as a task to be carried out "without ever tiring". Surely "never tiring" implies constant focus and stress; "peace" suggests an absence of these. It connotes calmness, placidity and serenity.
But that is a minor point. Who could be against peace, a truce in the Middle East and terrorism? These formed the Pope's agenda during his homily. However, in a speech last September at Germany's University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict had jeopardised peace by quoting a long dead Christian emperor who said the prophet Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman things". After all, in Muslim societies to insult Muhammad is among the gravest crimes possible.
Which is the real Benedict? Which is the real Bertie? They can't, after all, have it both ways. The "due dignity of the individual" is either respected or it is not. How do you think you might feel if the leader of another religion quoted somebody from the 14th century who said that Jesus Christ had brought the world only "evil and inhuman things"? Miffed? It's that "only" that really rankles, isn't it? Christianity brought the world the Spanish Inquisition, witch-burning and, closer to home and within memory, Letterfrack industrial school. These would generally be regarded as "evil and inhuman things"? Islam has promoted dismemberment, stoning and beheading for crimes. These too are properly seen as "evil and inhuman things".
So it seems that all serious movements - religious, political, social - rather like technology, bring a mixture of good and evil. That is only to be expected, but it's seldom admitted. People - popes, cardinals, bishops, ayatollahs, imams and other Islamic clerics - are only human, after all, and their urges to power are as flawed as other people's.
They may or may not mean to pervert the truth but even their urges to do good can result in perversion. It's the old story of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. It is, at least figuratively.
So, we listen to these platitudinous New Year messages and maybe wonder why Benedict and Bertie have succeeded in becoming powerful. Perhaps they believe in power more than truth. They certainly acted that way on the first day of 2007. We really need, especially in an election year, to be more critical and accept less nonsense. PR dross is not making it any easier.