Marc Coleman again

I wrote last month some critical remarks about an article by Marc Coleman in "The Irish Times", and had intended to follow it up with some more positive things about the article, but then Enza flew in. However, both in fairness to him - he has had a sleepless few weeks, apparently - and because the points he made are so important, I post the follow-up now.

He observes that :

We take the State for granted and assume that all aid for the poor must be channeled through it. The willingness of people to care for the elderly is declining placing a burden on the state. In schools teachers are increasingly forced to provide parenting services because some real parents are either too busy scared or disinterested while juvenile delinquency and crime place an increasing burden on An Garda Siochana. ..Everywhere and more often than before the taxpayer is confronted with the cost of a declining common ethic which in this country comes from Christianity. The question to ask now is whether the State is going too far ...trying to solve problems that can only be solved by people families and communities acting on their own initiatives ... bonds of ethics and civility are falling asunder ...they were fostered by Judaeo-Christian tradition stretching back centuries. In the naive assumption that the State will foot the bill, those traditions are being abandoned in favour of synthetic alternatives ...[while] a consumerist culture is giving people too little time with families and more money to indulge the alternatives. Thus, the substance of life - religion family and community - is being squeezed in a relentless pincer by the two great materialist forces of our age - capitalism and state interventionism.

With only a quibble or two e.g.the use of "dis-interested" when he means "uninterested", I would endorse every word of that.

Comments

[OpinionEight]

Siplistic analysis leads to simplistic criticism and this is a perfect example.
First of all I don't really buy into the writer's charaterisation of 'we'. I personally do not accept his view that 'we' assume that all aid for the poor must be channeled through the Gov. Most people are well aware of the wide range of charity organisations catering for the ever decreasing number of poor people in this country. And it is our successful mixed capitalist economy that has brought aboutthis rapid decrease. Of course the Poverty Industry invents ways of increasing their 'claimed' level of poverty by raising the bar each year - to suit it's own ends. But that is also becoming more apparent to ordinary people too.

I am however far more appalled by this writer's astonishing assertion that the ethics of caring for the elderly and poor is a Christian ethic, or a Judaeo-Christian tradition. What utter nonsense. The 'ethic' of such care is far older than any Judaeo-Christian tradition and is practiced to a far greater extent by non Judaeo-Christian societies in the world today. Look at the Asian world as a clear and obvious example.

There is no doubting the fact that individuals in our society are tending to look more to the Gov to tackle poverty and are becomeing less committed to caring for their elderly.

However the real truth is that:

a) Yhere has been a huge increase in life expectancy and hence our parents and grand parents are now living far longer than decades ago. This produces a burden on families is far far heavier than before. Drawing a negative conclusion without recognising this basic fact is therefore misleading and disingenuous.

b) The outstanding success of our mixed-capitalist economy in the last 15 years has slashed poverty in this country while our taxes, and general income to our Gov has increased enormously. It is a very fair and reasonable expectation therefore, in my view, that our Gov has the capability and resources to tackle what remains - allied with the many charity organisations.