In defence of The Times (3)

One would have thought that Kenneth Wain's commitment to democracy would have spurred him first to applaud the Irish government for holding the referendum, then to rebuke all the other European governments who did not, and only lastly to lament the failed Treaty, a failure however that reflects a democratic success. (Treaty And The Times, June 24).

Prof. Wain's commitment to democracy seems to be based on the supercilious Liberal conception of an elite leading, enlightening, teaching the masses the way forward.

When the masses don't see things quite as they should see them, as the elite wants them to see them, then at best they should be instructed as to how things should be seen, and at worst they should be ignored.

This is the ceremonial attitude towards democracy - democracy provides only the formal approving signature at the very end, oblivious to what it approves, so that the elite, our socio-political engineers, may continue submitting this Continent to their grand economic and social projects. Silly me for thinking that democracy proposes to discover, and not create, the will of the people, "unenlightened" though it may be.

Lastly, to make a major issue of the sixth seat, but then fight for a Treaty which would have greatly diminished the power of what seats we already have, seems to me to be a strange paradox that makes sense only in some surrealist parody of totalitarian propaganda. How does one come to prefer an extra finger on the condition that his arms are bound tightly behind his back? The mind truly boggles.