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The Burkean Journal Interviews Maria Steen of the No Campaign

Maria Steen is at the forefront of the pro-life campaign in Ireland, and she is urging a No vote in the upcoming referendum on the Eighth Amendment tomorrow on May 25th. She is a spokeswoman for the Iona institute and mother of four. Steen has featured on national...

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The Fourth Estate and a Fifth Column

Looking through some of the online coverage of the launch of Fine Gael’s Vote Yes campaign, one exchange on Twitter was particularly interesting. Hugh O’Connell, Political Correspondent for The Sunday Business Post, was obviously impressed by the written...

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A Doctored Solution

Photo: “The Rock of Cashel [...]” by RX-Guru is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 Around the turn of the 12th century, Muirchertach Ua Briain, grandson of Brian Boru, had plans to become High King of Ireland. He couldn’t risk the Rock of Cashel, the traditional seat of...

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When They Go Low, We Go High

The Minister for Health Simon Harris is a man on a mission. With the health service crumbling on his watch, he needs to divert the public’s attention away from his record, and so he’s focusing all his energies on the campaign to repeal the 8th Amendment. Harris has...

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Examining Europe’s Recent Elections

The past month or so saw three major elections and many fascinating political events that came hand in hand with them. On the other side of the continent Vladimir Putin’s Russia-first mandate is stronger than ever following the presidential election there. Closer to...

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On Belfast, Fintan O’Toole, and Male Honour

(Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding) The recent rape trial in Belfast, media coverage of texts and WhatsApp messages from those involved and the acquittal of all four defendants gave rise to a true national conversation, much of which was played out in the media.   Away...

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Sexual Morality and the New Generation

2018 so far has seen an explosion of awareness and discussion surrounding sexual misconduct and the wider context of sexual attitudes in our culture. Social media campaigns such as #MeToo and #IBelieveHer have highlighted society’s inability to mix “modern...

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Nazi Pugs and Free Speech in Modern Britain

Communists and Nazis Have No Sense of Humour In 1965 Milan Kundera wrote a dark satirical novel titled The Joke. The early portion of the book is set in 1950’s Czechoslovakia, which at the time was ruled by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) after a coup...

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The Shape of Water’s Vulgar Relationship

The 2018 Academy Award for Best Picture was given to The Shape of Water. This film did not only skilfully prove our elders right by denominating what is vulgar as being related to the vulgus (the throng), it also contributed to enhance what tyrannical masses have...

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Senator Noone’s Tweet of Fame

Editorial Note: This article was originally published in the Burkean Journal on the 3rd of April but it was lost when we were fixing our website in the last couple of days. Everyone deserves their 15 minutes of fame. Some are even lucky enough to really achieve it....

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Why Russia’s Election Matters

Many Western pundits these days like to ask the question: do Russia’s elections actually matter? After all, the incumbent Vladimir Putin is virtually guaranteed to win. The short answer to this question is yes. However short answers are boring, and they never properly...

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What is BDS really about?

With international reports linking SJP chapters in the USA with terrorism, and BDS in the UK with violence and antisemitism, what are we really being asked to vote on? Trinity College students want to be on the right side of history. Told about oppression and...

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When does Life Begin?

When does life begin is probably the most fundamental question in the abortion debate. The pro-life side occasionally assumes that people know the answer to this, and the pro-choice side often seems to ignore the question entirely. Yet it is the single most important...

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A Proposal for a Course on National Studies

What with the “Beast from the East”, the upcoming abortion referendum and the ongoing crises in health and housing, you’ve most likely missed a double celebration of the Irish language that’s languishing at the bottom of the media’s priority list. “Seachtain na...

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Reviving the Irish Revival

Many years ago, I tried to read Clive Barker’s gargantuan fantasy novel Weaveworld, which centres around a magical world hidden in a carpet. I didn't make it even half-way through its six hundred pages, and I only have a very dim recollection of what I read. But one...

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Ireland and the Coming Post-Liberal Order

Cemented by solid gains made by Eurosceptic and ultranationalists parties this March, Italy now joins a list of nations breaking ranks from the American led liberal order pervasive across the continent since the fall of the Berlin Wall. With an emphasis on market...

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The Perilous White Male Rhetoric

The students’ union in Trinity has a new president, one Shane De Rís. He apparently doesn’t like me (or indeed himself) very much. “I want this to be the last time four white male candidates stand upon this stage. I will refocus the SU to make sure it represents all...

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Letter to the Editor. Re: ‘UCD’s Gender Neutral Toilets’

Sir, – I’ve been watching the growth of your publication online for many months now; the transformation of an arguably well-meant (if poorly executed) conservative voice on campus to a shouty mouthpiece for disgruntled individuals who appear convinced that good...

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DCU’s Referendum: A Case for Irish Reunification

From today until the 9th of March, Dublin City University students will be asked to vote on whether or not they want their Students Union to support Irish reunification. The campaign is being run by 'DCU4Unity' and has cross-party support from the DCU branches of Ógra...

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The Socialist Case For Being Pro-Life

If nothing else, conservatives and libertarians can admire the sincere socialist belief in improving the material conditions of the working class. Whilst we may show a preference towards private ownership as well as a justified apprehension towards state control over...

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Book Review: Borstal Boy

Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan is a book that I’ve meant to read for a long time, and I finally got around to it last year. My main interest in Brendan Behan is as an icon of Irishness, and as a figure in Irish social and cultural history. Irish republicanism,...

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UCD’s Gender-Neutral Toilets

UCD’s Gender-Neutral Toilets

Just recently University College Dublin announced that they are planning to re-designate 170 toilets as gender neutral and construct new transgender changing facilities. Supposedly this move is part of a new university policy to provide a welcoming campus for...

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The National Party: An Essential Alternative?

The National Party: An Essential Alternative?

Justin Barrett. (National Party) In November of 2016 a group of endeavouring Irish nationalists announced the formation of a new political party, the National Party. Founded in order to combat what they perceive to be the dangerous trajectory upon which the nation...

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The National Party: A Waste of Potential?

The National Party: A Waste of Potential?

Justin Barrett and James Reynolds in Sligo. (National Party's website) Founded in 2016 by Justin Barrett, famous for his role in the pro-life organization Youth Defence and his campaigning against the Treaty of Nice in 2002, as well as James Reynolds, affectionately...

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University of Limerick’s SU Mandate: Death of Democracy on Irish campuses

University of Limerick’s SU Mandate: Death of Democracy on Irish campuses

On Wednesday, February 21st, the University of Limerick Students’ Union voted to campaign for the repeal of the 8th Amendment. The union’s official paper, An Focal, reported that a total of 256 UL students turned out to vote on whether their union would campaign to...

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Putting the Irexit Conference into Perspective

Back in 2009, Irish voters were going to the polls in the re-run of the Lisbon Treaty referendum. Ireland had voted no to this treaty in 2008 but as was the case with the Nice referendum, the authorities of the European Union did not accept 'no' for an answer. A...

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Ireland’s Nuclear Future? An Assessment

The embryonic Irish nuclear industry met its demise on the Wexford shoreline over the political furore surrounding attempts made by the Irish government to construct a total of four nuclear power plants to meet the country’s burgeoning energy needs. A brainchild of...

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The Conservative’s Guide to Trinity’s 2018 SU Elections

The Conservative’s Guide to Trinity’s 2018 SU Elections

For over a week now, the excitement has been building up. First you had the hoards of students waving flyers in your face every time you walked through the Arts Block or the Hamilton Building. Then came the profile picture frames of your friends on Facebook endorsing...

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The Escalating War over Freedom of Speech on Campuses

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” - George Washington In February, 2016, American conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro spoke at the University of...

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Judging 80’s Ireland

The long overdue apology by an Garda Síochána issued last month to Joanne Hayes, whose life was blighted forever by the almost forgotten “Kerry Babies” scandal, has triggered a thoroughly risible campaign to re-write recent Irish history. The media coverage was almost...

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A Case against Ethnic Nationalism and Irexit

Irexit: the new attempt of the pseudo-intellectuals to create anarchy, promote ethnic-nationalism, and enact reactionary revisionism. Despite the fact that Ireland remains one of the most pro-European states within the Union, there is no doubt that the Irexit...

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Mr. Martin’s Unprincipled Politics

The last few weeks have been difficult ones for many of Fianna Fáil’s representatives, members and supporters. It would long since have been clear to them that their party leader was not going to faithfully represent their expressed views in the national debate...

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The Curious Case of the Canadian Psychologist

One day I requested Jordan B. Peterson’s first book, Maps of Meaning, from the university library stacks. I already had an electronic copy and watched the whole lecture course, so the hassle was probably a waste of time, but I still had this strange impulse to...

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Why Ireland leans to the Left

One of the greatest pleasures for a student of politics is to encounter an informed citizen from a nation whose political system you have studied, and to discuss with them the situation there. Answers to the mysteries of Irish politics, however, can be hard to provide...

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W.B. Yeats: Irish Revolutionary Conservative

“I do not appeal to the professional classes, who, in Ireland, at least, appear at no time to have thought of the affairs of their country till they first feared for their emoluments – nor do I appeal to the shoddy society of 'West Britonism' – but to those young men...

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A New Year, but not a New Trump

James Bradshaw analyses Trump's first year in office and points out some possible scenarios that we might experience during his second year as president of the United States. It’s been just a year since Donald John Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the...

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A Conservative Approach to Climate Change

Therese Friis questions the common policies and current energy sources used to combat climate change while arguing for another way to look after our environment. Global warming and changes in the environment are a threat that affects anyone who finds themselves...

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Book Review: The Strange Death of Europe

“Europe is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide. Whether the European people choose to go along with this is naturally, another matter.” Thus begins Douglas Murray’s recent and controversial bestseller: The Strange Death of...

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Feelings Versus Freedom: The New Censorship

In response to the comments raised by the Minister for the Diaspora and International Development regarding John Waters' speech at the University of Notre Dame, Hugh Treacy takes to task the ever-increasing "feelings based" censorship. John Waters has been through...

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Book Review: A Conflict of Visions

“It would be good to be able to say that we should dispense with visions entirely, and deal only with reality. But that may be the most utopian vision of all. Reality is far too complex to be comprehended by any given mind.”  - Thomas Sowell A Conflict of Visions,...

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The Case for the Opt-Out Option

Donnchadh Curran argues that while leaving the Students' Union may not be necessarily a good thing, students should still have the chance to do so. A petition has been launched in Trinity, as many reading this will be aware, for a referendum which would enable...

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A Fresh Farce from the Trinity Administration

Earlier today an email was circulated throughout Trinity College. It announced that the board of the university had “approved a proposal from the Equality Committee that the title given to first- and second-year undergraduate students be changed from “Freshman” to the...

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The Forgotten Refugees

He watched his children drown; his wife was eaten alive by sharks. This is not from the script of some Hollywood horror story. This is the story of how the Lazos, a family of Cuban refugees, met their end in the waters of the Caribbean. Their only crime was attempting...

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Israel, an Irrational Hatred.

The last number of years have seen the Middle East descend into violence, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Syria and a humanitarian crisis in Yemen. In Africa, Boko Haram has terrorised northern Nigeria with massacres and mass kidnapping...

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We deserve a better CSC

Several weeks ago, the Central Societies Committee (CSC) voted against a motion calling for Dublin University Gender Equality Society (DUGES) to change their name to Dublin University Feminist Society, warning that such a change could “imperil” the future of the...

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Trump: A Herald of the New Conservatism

Donald Trump has been the elected President of the United States for a year. As inconceivable as it seemed to his opponents before his election, it is a fact. Their difficulty in coping with it is entirely their problem. What we as European conservatives should be...

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Irish Media Duplicity and the Halawa Case

DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this article is only to clearly lay out the facts surrounding the Halawa case and to criticise its coverage by the Irish media. Every important piece of information I have stated is numbered and these refer to sources which may be found at...

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Free speech, BDS and the Israel Exception

In February this year Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) shut down a speech by the Israeli ambassador organised by the Society for International Affairs (SOFIA).  In September, members of SJP who also belong to Trinity People before Profit again demonstrated...

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State Funding of Newspapers is Fascism

Micheál Martin likes to think of himself as an ideas man. Most of his are bad, many are terrible, but his latest plot to bring the dying print media under state control represents a new low for him, and a giant leap along the road to serfdom. Fianna Fáil’s...

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Free Speech has a Cost

A phrase that seems to be growing increasingly popular amongst the regressive left these days is ‘free speech has a cost’, usually followed by a horrendously bastardised version of Karl Popper’s thoughts on the paradox of tolerance, or a link to that bloody XKCD...

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Conservatism and the LGBT Movement

Conservatism and the LGBT Movement

Paddy Manning, Douglas Murray, Milo Yiannopoulos and Peter Thiel. On Thursday 26 October, Aleyde Mangnan spoke at a debate in Trinity College Dublin entitled ‘This House Believes Conservatism is incompatible with the LGBT movement’. This article presents some of the...

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The Built-In Revolution in Free Markets

Indy100, the Independent’s sort of sideshow for the less literate, was delighted with Ryanair’s woes last month. “Theresa May hails the free market hours after Ryanair cancels flights of 400,000 people,” it crowed, the implication obviously being that if the free...

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A Letter to “Victimised” Conservatives

It is clear to most that there is a definite bias within academia and the media against all heterodox  beliefs, including, but not limited to, conservatism. As time has progressed, the voices on both sides of the debate have become increasingly more polarised, the...

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Considering Cosgrave

Discreet as he was about politics in later years, the record of the late Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, and the platforms on which he stood, speak volumes for him. Indeed, his personal conduct and the values to which he fiercely held, could well be a template for a modern...

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The Myth of Angela Merkel’s Germany

In May, Angela Merkel declared that Germany could no longer rely on Germany’s strongest traditional allies - the United States and the United Kingdom. Instead, she confidently asserted that the destiny of the European continent was “in our own hands.” (The irony that...

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Women in Surgery, Humans in Surgery.

Last year, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland set up a working group on Gender Diversity in Surgery. Professor John Hyland, president of RCSI, took to The Irish Times last week to give us an update. In an opinion piece titled We need more female consultant...

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The Modern Irish Identity that We Want?

There's a strange moment in childhood on this Island where you must learn that you are Irish. I knew it in my own life and got to witness its cycle again in my sister fifteen years younger. "Is Ireland in America?" she asked me, what a bloody question. She in her own...

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Socialism has failed, long live Socialism

As the collapse of Venezuela continues, the anguished cries of its people are not half as unbearable as the silence of international apologists for a failed ideology, Michael D. Higgins among them. We can expect much more ill-conduct should our political establishment...

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Katherine Zappone and the Cult of Youth

Last week, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Katherine Zappone, made the following comment: “Young voices must be the loudest in deciding our future.” As partial truths go, surely that is up there with the worst of them. Not only is it an egregiously...

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An Unjust Law and Ascough’s Dilemma

You wanna know what you need to make a basic 12-gauge shotgun? It’s pretty basic stuff. You need a metal tube, 18.5mm wide, and a screw will suffice as a firing pin. For further information go to YouTube and search for the word “slamfire”. I’m sorry to have done this...

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To Turn Back From the Rubicon

Recent years have been a time of great upheaval for the Irish people. The greatest change has been that the cultural and political differences that once revolved around religious and national affiliations have now been realigned along the conservative/liberal fault...

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Read this Cartoon and Shut Up, Idiot.

Without a doubt, the most endearing thing about the modern progressive left is the way it thinks that it is the first movement in history to think things that most of us learn from childhood. This is complemented by its almost universal view that the world’s problems...

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Australian Referendum: An Inside Perspective

As I write my first article for this journal, I’m watching the ferries meander around Sydney’s Circular Quay and considering how a loose-lipped drag queen ended up prompting my latest visit down under. In early 2014, Rory O’Neill (aka Panti Bliss) laid into members of...

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Are You Liberal or are You Kind of Liberal?

‘I’m a believer of free speech.’ ‘I don’t judge.’  ‘People should be allowed to express their opinions freely...’ This is the current soundtrack to today’s society. It’s quite a beautiful tune, truth be told. To survive the marathon that often characterises our daily...

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When Even Sports Become Political

If you were hoping to relax and enjoy a nice game of football, beer in hand, chanting the national anthem with your homies to get away from the over-politicised world we now live in, think again. That old flame was reignited with President Trump's comment about NFL...

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PBP’s Disgraceful Action

It is more than clear that we here at The Burkean Journal have our ideological differences with Trinity’s People Before Profit, as we do with many other students’ societies and communities around the college. We do not dispute PBP’s right to self-expression which they...

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“Abundistan”: The Perception of Infinite Resources.

Everything, except perhaps human ignorance, is finite. A telling aphorism for sure, but in the matter of economics and governance, ignorance of finite means to meet our ends is the cause of many bad outcomes. Modern politics in the post war era, marked as it is by...

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From the Editors: Welcome to the Burkean Journal

It is a great pleasure for us to be writing this first editorial of the Burkean Journal and to welcome you all to this project which is no longer just an idea, but a reality. And though we cannot say that with the magazine’s launch we’ll be starting a revolution...

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Electability Lost, Principle Regained

The recent controversy surrounding Tory grandee Jacob Rees-Mogg was illustrative of the difficulties which the issue of abortion presents to pro-life people who wish to advance politically, but it also pointed to how such figures can re-assert moral principles which...

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A Letter to Western Europeans from Poland

Dear Europeans, Do not be fooled by the ideology of this new utopian neo-socialism highly promoted by the EU which in our opinion, it's pure robbery. It is a product of an old ideology built on violence and thus intolerant of any discussion. For centuries, most state...

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Again… A University is not a Safe Space

In a recent debate at the Oxford Union, Peter Tatchell spoke in support of the motion "A University Should Not Be a Safe Space". The gay rights rights campaigner justified his rejection of such a policy by claiming that it would allow a self selected group of people...

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Being a Populist in an Age of Elite Disdain

The ideology of the elites is now actively opposed to the ideology of the masses. The word populism is now most commonly seen wielded as a cudgel to beat down those people who express views that think to set foot outside the rigidly structured and contained debate...

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We Need a Genuine Abortion Debate in Ireland

Pardon the pun, but I could write this entire article about the misconceptions circling the abortion debate in Ireland right now.  Tune in to the mainstream media for even the shortest time and you’ll get the impression that every last women in Ireland is begging our...

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Reclaiming the History of Irish Catholicism

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell, 1984 Every so often, a story about Ireland appears in the international media which makes reference to Ireland’s transformation from a conservative Catholic...

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The Little Mermaid is already feminist

The author Louise O’Neill is to release what is being described as a ‘feminist retelling’ of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. “Fairy tales have a dubious record when it comes to representations of women,” Lauren Fortune, editorial director for the...

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