Kevin Myers is an Irish writer for the Irish Independent newspapers. I came upon Mr. Myers and his work while reading Joel Kotkin, the American Demographer and writer and an article by Mr. Myers seemed to dovetail with Kotkin and my own thoughts about the dangers of public unions - tax salaried employees. California is sunk and Illinois is sliding to economic ruin due to the strident harping of SEIU and AFSCME. Massive numbers of people put the itch in the undies of gutless and dim politicians - always has been the case.
SEIU is a danger to the American Middle Class and the American Labor Movement that helped give this country a standard of living unmatched by any nation in history - until now.
Mr. Myers July 15, 2009 took Irish Public Unions to task for much the same reasons that I perceive SEIU and the lesser lights to be threat to the middle class.
There is no money left to tax!
Mr. Myers casts a surgeon's eye on movements grassroots and others that are often jammed down the public's maw by lazy members of the media.
I am a fan.
Kevin Myers (born 30 March 1947 in Leicester, England) is an Irish journalist and writer. He writes for the Irish Independent and is a former contributor to The Irish Times newspaper, where he wrote the "An Irishman's Diary" opinion column several times weekly. Until 2005, Myers wrote for the Sunday Telegraph in the UK.
His articles often offer criticism of left-wing opinion and the "liberal consensus", sometimes incorporating hyperbole, sarcasm and parody.
Myers' Irish Times opinion columns were often in contrast to its editorial position, which led to some conflict with his editors. In early January 2005, The Irish Times refused to publish a column in which he accused the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) of responsibility for the Northern Bank robbery. It was later published by the Daily Telegraph[2] He often advocates support for the United States, though he is sometimes critical of the foreign policies of the Bush administration. He ultimately endorsed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He has praised George W. Bush, but has also described him as 'mad'. He is frequently critical of anti-war activists.
Myers is sceptical of the viability of multiculturalism and favours limits on immigration to prevent the growth of racial tension in Ireland. He has criticised the Catholic Church in many pieces, and favours the legalisation of prostitution.[4] In recent articles he has been critical of Islamic fundamentalism and extremism. In his journalism Myers has opposed the classification of Travellers as an ethnic minority,[citation needed] and has opposed feminist philosophy and the role of trade unions in setting economic policy. He has written against the compensation culture and has opposed state policies towards the Irish language. (emphasis my own)
Other columns have a less political nature, discussing road safety, pet peeves, rugby union, favourite places in Ireland, etc. The fortnightly satirical publication, The Phoenix, regularly lampoons what it sees as his apparent self-obsession, and referring to him by his other names such as Kevin Myarse or Colonel MyArse.
Here is one of Myers' great pieces dealing with 'Feminists' against women and children:
By Kevin Myers
Tuesday April 07 2009
'Protect women and children in next week's Budget', declared the headline in a press release from the National Women's Council last Friday. The statement added a couple of paragraphs later: "Women and children are at the greatest risk of poverty and all payments supporting women and children should be protected. Women are already facing serious consequences from the recession with unemployment figures showing the sectors of retail and services have been severely hit."
So, 36 years after the foundation of the NWCI, we see what the official, government-sponsored version of Irish feminism has mutated into: the cry of the officers on the deck of the foundering Titanic -- "Women and Children First". But at least in those days there was a coherent moral order behind that command. Children were children, and women were seen to be weaker and inferior and thus voteless; gentlemen of all classes would naturally stand back and give them places in the lifeboats first.
If there is a coherent moral order to the present thoughts of the National Women's Council, it is that words no longer mean what they used to. In the Council's prospectus for the year 2009, the word "equality" is used 38 times. Yet clearly, in the sisters' deviant vocabulary, "equality" does not mean equality of pain, or hardship or suffering or poverty. No: it means the opposite of equality. It means a protection from these conditions, regardless of what men are enduring. In other words, lifeboat-feminism, surely the most ignoble and unprincipled of all the many liberal political creeds which dominate our ethos today.
Only a lifeboat-feminism could spout the gibberish "Women and children are at greatest risk from poverty . . . Women are already facing serious consequences from the recession", the very day after the unemployment figures were released. These showed that of the 19,600 jobs lost in March, 13,600 were those of men, and 6,000 were those of women. That is to say, job losses amongst women were just 44pc of the rate endured by men. Moreover, the area in which job losses are not going to occur, the public service, is heavily dominated by female employees. Only an organisation driven by a demented sense of counter-factual, gender self-pity could promote the fiction of female victimhood at such a time.
And no, the NCWI press release doesn't mean "mothers", it makes no mention of mothers, not even once. Though interestingly enough, it refers to "women and children" four times, and to "women" just three times. Psychologically, this is simply placing women at the protected level of children, just as was done on the Titanic: quite an achievement for a state-subsidised feminist body in 2009, if a largely unsurprising one.
Naturally, the National Women's Council is a quango, of which there is (equally naturally) no male equivalent. Over 70pc of its budget comes from the Department of Justice and, wait for it, Equality and Law Reform. Now, you just know that those terms "equality" and "law reform" are never intended to apply to improve the lives or the legal position of men, don't you? Other state-providers of funds to the NWC are Combat Poverty and the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. So, we have two government departments and one meaningless quango subsidising yet another quango, which is simply telling untruths, and making totally unrealistic demands of the Government which is paying for it.
This wouldn't matter if the shrill and unprincipled emanations of lifeboat-feminism were ignored. They are not. They are treated with a deferential respect by the Government and media alike. More than that, they have created a systemic imbalance in which women are consistently treated by less exacting standards than are men. The most grievous example of this of recent times concerned an Army officer who one night deserted her post as barracks-orderly, and left the armoury unprotected. She falsified the log to make it seem as if she had conducted perimeter patrols, which had never occurred, and she later lied to her commanding officer when questioned about her suspected absence from her post.
In other words, she had betrayed the greatest single institution in Irish life, and let down her fellow soldiers in a manner for which there could be no other proper outcome: a court martial, with an ignominious dismissal from the service. Instead, she was merely fined, and allowed to retain her commission. (Dear God in heaven, what would the great Bull Callaghan or Mickie Joe Costello have made of that?)
If the Army, the embodiment of the very qualities of steadfastness, stoicism and duty that we, as a society, most require in the maelstrom into which we are now sailing, can find itself applying the exceptionalist dogmas of lifeboat-feminism, what hope for the rest of us?
The blades of fiscal prudence will cut hard and low over the coming months, but you can be reasonably sure that, standing no less tall at the end than they were at the beginning, will be the state-sponsored feminist institutions of Irish life. And as the suffering deepens, their cry will doubtless ring over the ice-covered decks of Irish life: "Equality For All! Women And Children First!"
kmyers@independent.ie
