We must look to ourselves, to our internal resources and Irish character traits of resilience and self-belief , writes Elaine Byrne.
THE GREAT English poet, John Milton, was born 400 years ago today. A staunch supporter of Oliver Cromwell, he remains as relevant today for contemporary Irish politics - as much as Batman and the Irish Civil War. Yes, Milton was extraordinarily anti-Irish, notoriously describing Irish Catholics as "uncivilised and barbaric". That aside, his writings were symptomatic of the astonishing political changes that were taking place in the 1640s.
The English Civil Wars, also known as the English Revolution, provoked ideological questions for the first time about the very character of government and authority.
The then king, Charles I, clung oppressively to the monarchical principle of the "divine right of kings", and demanded absolute loyalty. Parliament, though, believed that the king had an obligation to his people to rule without tyranny and with the consent of parliament. Rather than an inherit-ocracy, parliament and Milton believed in the then intellectually dangerous concept of meritocracy.
Milton published one of history's most powerful and passionate philosophical defences of freedom from censorship. His Areopagitica tract advanced the principle of free speech, one which the American and French revolutionaries turned to for inspiration a century later, and which we still do today.
For Milton, "we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her [truth's] strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple." Truth "needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious; those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power: give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps".
This thought-provoking polemic on censorship might be worth downloading this week, and is freely accessible from the Project Gutenberg collection at www.gutenberg.org. Milton was also the author of the epic 12-book poem, Paradise Lost. (You can see a visual representation of this classic in the opening credits of tonight's episode of Desperate Housewives on RTÉ, when the residents of Wisteria Lane appear Adam- and Eve-like under the apple tree in the Garden of Eden.)
Despondent at the death of the English Revolution and the failure of politics, the now blind Milton chronicled the fall of man and his expulsion from Eden.
This brings us neatly along to Batman, who offered us some ethical consolation in last week's column. Our caped crusader has always been our incorruptible hero and Gotham's perpetual source of hope. Despite the Joker's best efforts in the movie The Dark Knight, Batman succeeded in defeating malevolence and restoring virtue to a city which threatened to morally self-destruct. As ever, good triumphed.
We depend on our heroes, no matter how abstract they are. Unlike Milton, we blindly assume that good always prevails, even when the collapse of politics and society appear to loom large. Alas, in January next year, DC Comics will publish the last instalment of the current comic series The Final Crisis which details the permanent banishment of Batman and Superman from our world. The following month sees the publication of the self-explanatory Batman RIP.
Batman, of course, is not real. All the same, it's discomforting to learn that a fictional character, born in the years of uncertainty before the second World War, departs our imagination when we still need him, in a time of international insecurity and general global hesitancy. So, when Mark Little tells us in sombre fashion on RTÉ's Prime Timethat the latest "exchequer figures bring us beyond even the darkest forecasts", we want to believe that a Dark Knight will magically appear and solve these things for us. We do not wake up to Morning Irelandwith a newsflash advising us to throw out our rashers and sausages. (What next?)
Politics cannot fail us. It may have disappointed and frustrated us in recent times, but we cannot allow it to fail us. We must look to ourselves, to our own internal resources and to Irish character traits of resilience and self-belief.
"In the silent watches, when weariness will sometimes cry halt to work, you will ask yourself - For what must I labour so? The answer comes, which alone can revive your drooping energies, Ireland - the Gael."
Hugh Kennedy, attorney general to WT Cosgrave's 1920s government, and later chief justice of the Irish Free State, made this speech at the formal opening of the Four Courts in 1924. Today, the Court of Criminal Appeal sits at the Hugh Kennedy Court. On his decision to enter politics, Kennedy wrote to Cosgrave: "I have faith in the future. New ideals, new inspirations, the necessity for a wholly different and more healthy outlook . . . which will deserve and will enjoy the confidence of the people . . . and contribute to the constructive thought of the country."
Having studied the personal papers of those from the different sides of the Civil War generation, it was striking and poignant how optimistic they were about the future, despite the awfulness of the recent tragic past.
Happy birthday John Milton, and it's with sadness that Batman is leaving us, but we have our own poetic superheroes. They are in our history and in our future, we just have to remember them and rediscover our self-confidence.