Our rights and freedoms are at stake as perilous as the end of the 1930s – Irish era

The global omni-crisis has the ability to numb us in a catatonic mental state; Many people say they undress from the cover of news because they have to avoid concerns, stress and discomfort in the face of events completely out of their control or their influence.

Times are indeed dangerous. Books and rules of rules are thrown into intellectual and moral joy. We risk descent into a global free-all.

And yet, we have to face new realities. And double on our own values.

We live in a good company – in no case perfect, but which company is? We live in an independent state. We have our own constitution and institutions.

The new article in the Constitution stipulates that “loyalty to the state” is a “fundamental political duty” of “all citizens”. What does that mean? Is it a simple rhetoric?

I don’t think. I think it is a proposal that should be widely taught, always recalled and deeply thoughtful. The very idea that each Irish citizen has a fundamental political duty of loyalty to the Irish state has deep implications for all of us.

Citizenship is not only to have a passport. While we live in a free democratic society, we do not dine à la carte as consumers of rights of certain major automatic counters known as government.

We live in a political community that has rules and obligations; We have a fundamental political duty to respect these rules. We owe to this democratic state and its institutions our respect. We each have the duty to obey its laws. We have not only this obligation towards the State; We owe it as citizens.

Perhaps the greatest constitutional case law, the late John M Kelly, author, professor, parliamentarian, speaker, minister and attorney general, taught students in the UCD that rights did not make sense in the absence of some corresponding duties to maintain these rights.

We live in a society where the invocation of rights is the very currency of social discourse. No project, political or social, has a large part, we are led to believe, unless it is described as “rights based”. Each political request is raised at the level of sacrosanct if it can be described in terms of “human rights”.

The entire international university community has evolved what they describe themselves as “rights”. International alliances and conventions are written in rights. They argue that these international instruments transcend the constitutions of independent states.

But where is there a word pronounced in “Duty Speak”?

If JM Kelly was right, and I think he was, why are we rarely, if we have never recalled our duties to each other and to our democratic state and to our constitution? If each desideratum is expressed in rights, including human rights, civil rights, economic rights, social rights, environmental rights, climate law, etc., where are corresponding duties? And who are they due? Are all these tasks only due by the state as the ultimate collective?

Take an example. We all have as citizens, “men and women also”, a constitutional right (mentioned in article 45) “to an adequate livelihood” by our occupations. Do we have a corresponding duty to work if we can to live? Or do we just have the right to “universal basic income”, as some support it?

If I think I am creative and spend my time painting, writing or making installations due to, the state must collectively the duty to pay the basic income of an artist? And if I succeed, should my fees be relieved of the duty to support the state in terms of taxation, when my secretary does not have such a right?

Can I get you from work due to the right, but invoke a duty of all the others to pay me while I do it? The constitutional law of my citizen to emigrate and become tax non -domiciled here while drawing all my Ireland income relieves me entirely from any obligation to pay personal taxes in the Irish state in the same way as my employees here must do?

We grant the rights to the education of parents. But the Constitution talks about their parental educational duties. What do we really want to say by that? What can parents do about it? Require newly constructed but abdiate classrooms of what is taught there?

If you completely divorce duty – or design duty as a collective and just as an individual – you create selfish ideology without duty of plutocrats in Washington and Moscow.

If your right to freedom of expression (especially when you are combined with Musk-Embal -resources) is fully relieved -American style -of the obligation not to destroy the character and the good name of others casually (especially those who are too poor to defend themselves), do they have rights?

In these perilous times, as perilous as the end of the 1930s, our rights and freedoms are at stake. The duty of loyalty of our citizen is to our state to defend them. We are not helpless spectators.