Generations of politicians, in government after government, have persuaded us that they'd have made this a more civilised state - if only they had the money.
We could be assured of their intentions. They wanted to do their best for everyone. They had a special care for those who most needed the services of the State.
But we were not a rich country. Our maps showed no natural resources, apart from land and sea, and these were not enough to keep our people at home.
As for public services, to keep them going, governments were obliged to levy taxes; to improve them, they'd have to look for more. We were a poor country and couldn't afford it.
Citizens would resent higher taxes and turn those who imposed them out of office. Their opponents, promising to reduce taxes and retain services, would be back in no time.
Well, the maps were wrong. As wrong as our cock-eyed version of history. Or the message, bludgeoned into us that since conditions could not be improved, we were better off as were. There were some excuses for the way we were taught. The real criminals were those who exploited our ignorance and made people afraid of change or questioning in any shape or form.
Some may think we've escaped from this stultifying past and are now enjoying a new age - of enlightenment as well as prosperity. We are not. We're in greater danger of a descent to anarchy than we ever were. Not because of wild-eyed agitators or dark conspiracies. The would-be wreckers are to be found with those who buy influence and bend rules; risk others' lives to build their profits and call anyone who puts the community first a fool.
They're fawned on by many who should be asking why they're still at large. But we have no excuses now, in politics, journalism or in any other area of public life. We are not poor. There is a mountain of evidence, statistical and tangible, which says so. You don't have to look beyond the property and financial sections of this newspaper for proof.
We are not ignorant, or at any rate deprived of information about the State of this country, our European neighbours or the wider world. The Combat Poverty Agency, the Conference of Religious of Ireland, the St Vincent de Paul Society and many more voluntary agencies see to that. So do the volunteers who work abroad, for Trocaire, Concern, Goal, Oxfam and others.
Here, too, as an Irish Times series has shown, a mountain of evidence is available to anyone who cares to read the reports or listen to the volunteers. The coalition of Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats can no longer plead poverty or ignorance to excuse the state we're in or our poor record overseas.
Administrations of the past claimed to have the will but not the means to change the way we were. No doubt some would have made more headway if they'd had the funds.
This government has the means in abundance; what it lacks, to an extent that is now a plainly visible national disgrace, is the will. Commentators can no longer claim to be taken by surprise by our levels of illiteracy; our deep and deepening divisions, or the persistence of conditions which most pretend to find intolerable.
Yet when a journalist, Breda O'Brien of the Sunday Business Post, and a politician, Roisin Shortall of the Labour Party, point to this state of affairs (on RTE 1), how are they answered? They are faced by a blustering Minister and a boorish commentator. One retreats behind ragged excuses, questioning the evidence and the good faith of those on the left who call attention to them.
The other turns on the groups trying to put pressure on the Government; and comes up with an insulting cliche. As if, by calling them "the poverty industry", he'd invalidated their case or found an answer to their questions.
Both Minister and commentator are shamed, not only by Ms O'Brien and Ms Shortall but by members of an audience clearly better informed about Irish life than they are.
It would be wrong to suggest the problems we face, or may be forced to confront, are the fault of this Government alone. They're not.
But such actions as the Government has taken - in the Budget and since the Budget - show that it sides with those who say let the good times roll. The payback boys.
And its reactions to the latest UN Human Development Report confirm the opinion of its harshest critics: that that means to hell with anyone who isn't able to make it, by hook or by crook.
On social issues, the government staggers from incoherence to indifference. It shares with the Doheny and Nesbitt economists a tendency to blame the poor for poverty and almost everyone else for asking too much.
As Pat Rabbitte said, when times were tough people were told they couldn't have what they wanted because the money wasn't there. Now that the money is there people are told they can't have what they want for fear of rocking the boat.
The UN report showed up Irish society as backward and intolerant.
We have the highest concentration of poverty among 16 Western countries outside the United States. The highest level of functional illiteracy; the second highest level of long-term unemployment.
Irish women are worse off than in any other industrialised country; less likely to hold positions of influence in politics or business.
And how does the Government respond? Dermot Ahern says it has known about this state of affairs for some time; the figures are out of date, unemployment has improved since 1995. So it has, but the divisions have also grown. And the government is not going to do anything about a problem which has less to do with handouts than with solid structural change, at home and abroad.
Liz O'Donnell, asked to comment on the report that aid transfers from developed to developing countries were at their lowest, said it was "morally curious".
But she was pleased to add that Ireland's contribution will have reached 0.45 per cent of GNP by 2002. At present, it's 0.32 per cent, less than half the UN's target. Morally curious. Morally bankrupt.
As I write, another issue which calls for the exercise of political will has come to the fore: the disagreement over decommissioning and the formation of a shadow executive in Northern Ireland.
The government and the SDLP seem to agree that Sinn Fein ought to take its places in the shadow executive without delay.
David Trimble disagrees: "There can be neither trust nor equality if one party to the agreement is not prepared to destroy their weapons of war," he said when the assembly met on Monday.
And indeed it's difficult, if not impossible, to imagine parties anywhere getting into government together while one has a paramilitary force on its side, if not under its control.
The international commission, now led by Gen John de Chastelain, was designed to ensure that the political and security elements of the agreement would develop hand in hand.
Sinn Fein has already named Martin McGuinness to represent it at the commission. To insist on a major political step before it has even produced an interim report is to ask for trouble.