Some years back Richard Dawkins was presented with a memorable question at the conclusion of a speaking engagement: “what if you’re wrong?” Dawkins, in fine fettle and particularly belligerent mood, responded with an impressively wide-ranging riff of different cultures and deities and shot back ‘what if you’re wrong?’. The rebuttal was centred on the argument that all religions are a product of geographical determinism so it’s nonsense to ask the non-believer if they’re wrong. The irony is that Dawkins’ own particular atheistic worldview could be argued to be socially constructed and grounded in his upbringing.
The rings that we tie ourselves in determining who is right and who is wrong have made our laws, institutions and safeguards an essential part of our way of life. The checks and balances of a functioning democracy haven’t sparked the public imagination much of late, but their necessity has become increasingly apparent with the flurry of emergency powers granted over the Covid 19 period. The Constitution of Ireland and its laws should be above short-sighted squabbles and enshrined in our way of life irrespective of current or future pandemics.
So, when Deputy Willie O’Dea recently asked the Taoiseach if the advice of the Attorney General had been sought in relation to Ireland signing up to the WHO Global Pandemic Treaty, and the Taoiseach looked as bamboozled as if asked an impromptu particle physics question, the blasé nature of our leaders’ decision-making process was laid bare. Was a referendum required? What are the implications here for the Irish state? What controls or safeguards will the Irish people have against the decisions of this third party to which you’ve handed over the reins?
As disturbing as the reaction to the question was, more disturbing still was the complete lack of interest or enquiry from the Irish media class. Ireland is a country with an established track record of putting the question of sovereignty to its people whether the Nice Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty, or a rerun thereof. The troika and bailout were not voted on but at least held the public’s attention and prompted furious debate. Once described by an EU apparatchik as ‘an island behind an island’, Ireland’s unique position geographically and culturally has involved an above-average amount of finagling to come in line with our European neighbours and membership of the EU. But there was always at least a conversation. To discover that in the post Covid 19 world that not only our head of government, but our entire media establishment, viewed the nation’s sovereignty as a twee throwback to century’s past was mind-boggling entirely.
To be clear: the world does need to plan for improved coordination and cooperation when – not if – the next pandemic comes along. Committing to a principle of international responsiveness makes sense. Pandemics care not for borders. But the extent and exact legal ramifications of these commitments need to be studied with a fine-tooth comb and put to the people whose lives they will be affecting. Perhaps the most obvious cause for concern is that anybody with an even passing familiarity with the facts will be familiar with the WHO’s glaring failures responding to the Covid 19 pandemic. It is beyond the remit of this piece and indeed beyond the scope of an average library to catalogue the ways in which the WHO was at best negligent and at worst complicit in some of the worst elements of the Covid 19 response and the Communist Chinese Party’s misinformation regarding the virus. To many public health experts, the WHO is an organisation that has become utterly compromised and is no longer fit for purpose.
Parking for a moment the particular organisation the Irish Government wants to give power to, the more worrying element was the carelessness with which they wanted to cede power in the first place. The complete lack of enquiry into such a fundamental change. The surety of it. The exchange shed light on a new and prevailing leadership style that is defined by blasé delegation of power to unelected parties based on a certainty of facts that overrides due process. The exchange between Deputy O’Dea and Taoiseach Micheál Martin represented the culmination of every emergency law, every government overreach, every institutional power trip, every line in the sand overstepped during the lockdown period. We have gone so far down the road of special powers overruling our laws and institutions that now even the country is up for grabs. As the Taoiseach stood fiddling with his pen, caught off guard but secure in the knowledge that the Dáil was virtually empty and no media scrutiny was to be expected, the conclusion could only be drawn that the powerful in Ireland do not for a moment consider that they might be wrong.
On what is this certainty based?
After all, our Swedish neighbours pursued a vastly different and less destructive Covid 19 public health policy with exceptional results so why in Ireland is there no retrospective, no second guessing of received wisdom and prevailing trends? There is a concept in marketing where the holy grail of a campaign is embedding the idea that ‘people like us do things like this’. You create an aspirational community where members will behave in a certain way because good taste demands it to be so. Think of Apple consumers jumping from wired headphones to earbuds despite the massive cost of transition. Most times a logical analysis wouldn’t let it stand but the decisions of the tribe are not done by logic, but by emotion. Simply put, Apple people no longer needed wires. People like us do things like this. This is the nature of leadership in the post Covid 19 world.
One can’t help but think that the government’s headlong dash into the WHO Global Pandemic Treaty is fundamentally rooted in the fact that other countries and other leaders that they admire are also doing it. Above issues of sovereignty or due diligence of the WHO is the simple fact that progressive leaders in countries we admire; Arden, Sturgeon, Macron, Trudeau, are enthusiastic for this Treaty. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Western leaders’ response to the Covid 19 pandemic was just how uniform it was, how countries pitched their responses against the acceptability of restrictions in other places. Lockdown – without any science but that reported by China – became the de facto response in Italy and almost immediately went from a nightmarish dystopian fantasy to the public health policy of best taste and refined minds. Prevailing pandemic policies over the next two years almost always involved overruling established laws and bulldozing fundamental freedoms.
The problem arises when somebody at the end of the seminar perks up with the simplest of questions:
What if you’re wrong?
What if you’re wrong about blithely dispensing with the Irish Constitution and the will of the people? There is a crisis of leadership in the West right now, where decisions are being made based on pure momentum and a general sense of people like us doing things like this. With no time for proper science, leaders are governing by group affiliation and emotion. In times of emergency the democratic principle gets suspended and what we’re witnessing with the WHO Global Pandemic Treaty is the attempted elevation of pandemics to circumnavigate democracies across the world. Right minded people would tell you pandemics supersede trivial domestic policies. Then again, right minded people would have told you six months ago that there would never be another European war. What if you’re wrong?