There are no prizes for guessing what would be top of mind on this 17th day of March 2021 for this native Pakeha of proud Irish ancestry.
Since I was a small child in Hamilton, St Patrick’s Day has always been one to celebrate, if only to remind myself that I regard it as one of the great blessings in life to have enjoyed the privilege of being born a Kiwi, but of Irish descent.
Three main reasons:
- I don’t know if there’s a Gaelic equivalent to the French expression joie de vivre, but I also don’t know anyone of Irish descent who doesn’t typify the joy of living.
- Whether or not from their Celtic traditions or their own Cromwellian-imposed persecutions by the English (probably a bit of both), the Irish have developed a flair for politics – at all levels of community organisation – not so much “whoever’s the government, I’m agin it” as “whatever’s wrong needs to be put right.” It’s the latter thought that motivates me, as a right-wing “Tory” to join traditional leftie Chris Trotter in opposing the insidious infection of woke-ism that is surfacing in New Zealand, in politics and the
newsviews media. - The pride in descent from a country whose monks, inspired by St Patrick, quite literally saved the civilisation that we enjoy in New Zealand and free democratic countries such as ours.
Let me expand on point 3 to explain why St Patrick is important to every one of us:
The Irish are part of a larger ethnic grouping called the Celts who first entered western consciousness about 600 BC, only a century and a half after the legendary founding of the City of Rome. Celts settled in what is now France, Spain, Turkey and Britain.
British Celts were later pushed by Angles and Saxons into Cornwall where they would become Cornish, and into Wales, where they became the Welsh. About 350 BC, some 50 years after Celtic tribes began their invasion of Britain, they reached Ireland. For some nine centuries, Ireland had an illiterate, aristocratic, semi-nomadic, Iron Age warrior culture, its wealth based on animal husbandry and slavery.
It remained largely wild and untamed until the 5th century AD and the arrival of the man who began civilising Ireland, a newly created bishop whose youth had been spent as a slave in Ireland after he had been kidnapped from Britain. He was Patricius, now venerated as the great St Patrick, who turned the Irish to religion, learning and the writing of books.
So it was that Ireland, a little island at the edge of Europe, had its moment of incomparable glory. As the Roman Empire fell, as all through Europe, unwashed barbarians descended on Roman cities, looting artefacts and burning books, the Irish, who were just learning to read and write, took up the great labour of copying all of western literature.
These scribes then served as conduits through which the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures were transmitted to the tribes of Europe, newly settled amid the rubble and ruined vineyards of the civilisation they had overwhelmed.
It was Irish monks who single-mindedly re-founded European civilisation. In white druid-like robes, they fanned out across Europe, founding monasteries which became great cities. Wherever they went they took their books, and they brought their love of learning and their skills in making books.
They saved civilisation, and but for them, we would not know, even here in New Zealand, the modern, generally civilised way of life which has come to us from Europe.
That was the land, and they were the people from whom I and other Irish Kiwis are descended, the saviours of civilisation.
That’s why we Kiwis of Irish ancestry need to become actively out-spoken in our land today. What is beginning to infect our country as woke-ism is not civilisation, but a denial of it – a perversity that we have to put right.
Which is why I remain at 92 as activist a member of the National Party as I ever was in my prime, because National (admittedly supported by ACT) looks to be the last bastion of defence of the core value on which its foundation was based in the 1930’s: freedom.
This is also why I attended on Sunday evening at the Remuera Club the extremely well-attended, closed session for party members to hear the results of the review of National’s woeful performance in last year’s General Election. And also why I’ll be sending in my own private thoughts on what our party needs to do to remind the population that National is truly national, welcoming support (and membership) from all sections of our Kiwi society.
This is also why I am grateful also to this BFD Newsline for the opportunity it provides for freedom of speech, including my own opinionated ramblings. And why The BFD will continue to grow in popularity and readership while what was once respected mainstream news media will wither and choke on its woke-ism and misinformation.
Footnote:
Why do we allow misuse of good words? The word “gay” used to describe happiness and joy. Now it has been misappropriated by just one small section to disguise their difference from the rest of us. I hope something similar is not on the way to happening with the word “diversity”, especially in our increasingly joyful multi-cultural society.
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