How To Run an Opposition Government, By 17th Century Ireland

[Plaid Adder]

I'm doing some research on early modern Ireland and I came across a hilarious story from the seventeenth century:

Back in 1612, a poet and courtier named Sir John Davies wrote up what turned out to be an influential tract called _A Discovery of the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued,_ in which he asks the question, "How come, 400 years after Henry II sent his barons over to Ireland to take the joint over, England is only just now starting to feel like they really have control?" (Poor man. If only he had known what was going to happen 30 years later when the Civil Wars broke out...or during the two Jacobite rebellions that were coming up...or in 1798...or in 1803...or...say, doesn't England STILL have troops in Northern Ireland? And it's only been, what, 850 years or so?)

It would make instructive reading for W. and company, because the basic conclusions he keeps coming back to are:

1) Till now, we were never willing/able to commit enough troops to the project of achieving military conquest, so we were never really in control of the whole country

2) Since we didn't grant the conquered Irish equality under our law, of course they hate us.

Anyway, because Davies was just as into spreading the untamed fire of freedom round the globe as W. is, he was very excited to get a parliament up and running in Ireland. However--like W., now that I come to think about it--the Crown wanted to make sure that setting up parliamentary democracy wasn't going to lead to them getting their asses booted out of the country, so they gerrymandered the parliament to make sure it would be dominated by Protestant English-derived loyalist types.

The Catholic Old English, who made up the opposing faction, dealt with this creatively: on the opening day of parliament, when it was time to elect a speaker of the house, the Catholic faction refused to do a head count to see how many of them they were. The Protestants withdrew to do their own head count, so they could prove they were the majority party. While they were out, the Catholics took a vote, elected their boy Everard speaker, and installed him in the chair. When the Protestants came back and complained that this was unfair, the Catholics refused to budge, and eventually the Protestants bodily removed their guy from the speaker's chair and shoved Davies (their choice) into it, at which point the Catholic faction said, "This is an outrage!" and stormed out of the parliament en masse.

Productive? Perhaps not. But they did manage to force a crisis that eventually demanded royal intervention, so they got their voices heard. I told Liza this story, and we agreed that the Democrats should all read it. I mean, if there had been a modern press in those days, the Catholic faction would have OWNED that news cycle and many news cycles to come.

Food for thought,

The Plaid Adder

[two gun sid]

1. History just keeps repeating itself doesn't it?

Of course the PNACer's would refuse to accept the reality of which Mr. Davies wrote in 1612. They are too busy creating their own reality and taking us and the Iraqi people down the tubes with them.
As far as the Democrats learning from the Catholic Opposition well, I guess I'd have to see it to believe it.