Closer to Boston than Berlin?

I’m not sure.

Coming in from parochial calls at after nine this evening, I sat down to watch the RTE current affairs programme Prime Time.

Two serious issues were to be addressed: the first, the abuse of children in industrial schools; the second, the cost of goods to the ordinary consumer in Irish supermarkets.

RTE seemed to allow speakers for particular interests to engage in extensive exercises in obfuscation in both cases.In the first case, a claim was made that false claims had been made in order to claim compensation, and that this had been notified to the Gardai, but no substantiation of this claim was forthcoming; in the second case, it was claimed that maintaining high prices through a Government Order was beneficial to consumers, but it was never explained how having less money was helpful to us.

The United States Constitution regarded ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ as fundamental rights, but the jury is out on whether Irish governments can deliver such rights to our people.

If the Government is to have any role at all in society, one would assume that it is to adjudicate on what is true and what is not. How can people possess liberty unless they know what is true and what is false? Jesus himself emphasise the importance of knowing the truth, ‘€œyou will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’.

As long as our Government allows situations to persist where we are simply not told the truth, then we are a long way from being free.