Post by Maolsheachlann on Nov 14, 2019 13:53:08 GMT
It's long been my ambition to coin a phrase such as "The Tallaght strategy", or "The West Lothian Problem", or "Chesterton's Fence". Maybe this is my chance!
Recently I've been pondering on a problem that faces conservatives which I'm going to call the Gaelic Script Dilemma.
In the early days of the Gaelic revival, a lot of Irish language publishing used Gaelic type, which you can read about here.
This gradually gave way to Roman type, and this seemed both sensible and inevitable. Gaelic type is cumbersome to read, for people habituated to Roman type. Insisting on Gaelic type would make the revival of the Irish language an even more daunting task.
But at the same time, one can understand why so many in the Irish language movement wanted to use Gaelic type instead; it was more traditional and distinctive. Don't all conservatives feel a pang of loss when old things are discarded?
So this, I suggest, is the dilemma constantly facing conservatives, or traditionalists. We sometimes have to modernize precisely in order to conserve. But how far do we take this, and when have we gone too far? On the other hand, when have we become so puritanical and rigid that we end up sabotaging any effort at preservation?
This problem is often expressed in a quotation from The Leopard, an Italian novel about the Risorgimento: "For everything to stay the same, everything must change."
David Cameron said he supported gay marriage because he was a conservative. I don't think anyone on this forum would agree with him, but one understands the argument he was making. When is it a valid argument, and when is it not? How does one discern the essential thing to be conserved, rather than the incidental things which might be reformed or even discarded?
Recently I've been pondering on a problem that faces conservatives which I'm going to call the Gaelic Script Dilemma.
In the early days of the Gaelic revival, a lot of Irish language publishing used Gaelic type, which you can read about here.
This gradually gave way to Roman type, and this seemed both sensible and inevitable. Gaelic type is cumbersome to read, for people habituated to Roman type. Insisting on Gaelic type would make the revival of the Irish language an even more daunting task.
But at the same time, one can understand why so many in the Irish language movement wanted to use Gaelic type instead; it was more traditional and distinctive. Don't all conservatives feel a pang of loss when old things are discarded?
So this, I suggest, is the dilemma constantly facing conservatives, or traditionalists. We sometimes have to modernize precisely in order to conserve. But how far do we take this, and when have we gone too far? On the other hand, when have we become so puritanical and rigid that we end up sabotaging any effort at preservation?
This problem is often expressed in a quotation from The Leopard, an Italian novel about the Risorgimento: "For everything to stay the same, everything must change."
David Cameron said he supported gay marriage because he was a conservative. I don't think anyone on this forum would agree with him, but one understands the argument he was making. When is it a valid argument, and when is it not? How does one discern the essential thing to be conserved, rather than the incidental things which might be reformed or even discarded?
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