We Must be Talking

  Questioning American Democracy       Gerry OShea President Lincoln in his famous Gettysburg address delivered in November 1863, summed up the dream of a vibrant democracy for America in his famous words, “Government of the people, for the people and by the people.” Who can argue with such noble sentiments?   America never functioned as a perfect democracy based on the Gettysburg ideals. For instance, twice in recent times in Bush v Gore in 2000 and Trump v Clinton in 2016 the candidate who got the most votes lost the election – hardly a good advertisement for democracy. There is, of course, a constitutional reason for these aberrations but it does raise eyebrows about the fairness of a system anchored on belief in the equality of all citizens. Still, democracy is alive in America featuring hotly contested elections for local and federal offices. However, the system is in crisis since the last presidential election, won by Joseph Biden. His op...

  The Gaza Conflict           Gerry OShea James Baldwin, the great writer and civil rights leader, reflecting on the origin of most wars wrote, "People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” His words certainly resonate throughout the Middle East when we think of the unending conflicts between Shia and Sunni or Jews and Arabs. I read recently about an event that happened back in 1956 at a kibbutz located near a border fence where Palestinian fighters attacked the Jewish settlement. A security officer named Roi Rotberg confronted the attackers but lost his life in the ensuing fracas. Moshe Dayan, then Israel’s chief of the general staff, happened to be in that neighborhood attending a wedding and was asked to give an oration at Rotberg’s funeral. Speaking of the Palestinian killers he asked: “Why should we complain of their hatred of us? Eight years they sat in the refugee camps of Gaza and saw in front of their e...

  Who pays the Bills?        Gerry OShea   Conservatives love to preach about their core commitment to limiting the power of big government, their worst bugbear. So, it is not surprising that America’s spending on social benefits, as a share of GDP, is a great deal stingier than other Western countries. We trade higher take-home salaries for less generous safety nets.     This distaste for an intrusive central authority is not confined to spokespeople for the Right - it is shared throughout the population. However, teasing out the implications of this hatred of government interventions reveals major differences between the two main political parties in America. For those on the political right, this commitment is formulated around the need for fiscal discipline, and they lambast the rulers in Washington for disregarding this principle. They argue at every turn for a balanced budget or for policies that at least move in that directi...

  An Irish Unity Referendum         Gerry OShea As well as burning through five prime ministers since the Brexit referendum in 2016, the decision to leave the EU ushered in years of economic decline in Great Britain. The Tory argument that drove the change promised that by stripping their country from the domination of bureaucrats in Brussels they would invigorate the local economy and open the door to a new era of English supremacy. Brexit was carried by less than 52% of the electorate in the United Kingdom, but, significantly, it was rejected by the voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Polls show that if the British people were asked today to decouple from the European Union the proposal would be roundly defeated. The damage is done and Keir Starmer, the Labor Party leader and odds-on favorite to be the next British prime minister, has assured the electorate that while his party will actively pursue policies of close co-operation with ...