Last week, Irish President Michael D. Higgins gave a speech at Manchester University regarding his perception of an ‘intellectual crisis’ in Irish life. It was not the first time that Ireland’s answer to Tony Benn spoke at a British university. Last February, during his first foreign trip as Head of State, President Higgins gave a lecture at the London School of Economics (LSE). He used it to praise George Bernard Shaw’s brand of socialism and to denounce those great voices of liberty, Friedrich Von Hayek and Karl Popper.
In so doing, I believe he came dangerously close to acting outside of his presidential powers. For can you imagine Queen Elizabeth II using a speech at University College Dublin to denounce Cardinal Newman? We all know the Queen would not do that because she profoundly respects her constitutional constraints.
Hayek and Popper, both former professors at LSE, fiercely condemned the totalitarian movements of the Twentieth Century. Hayek believed societies should never be planned or ordered from above, a strategy which leads only to tyranny. Rather, genuine freedom emerges from the free association of individuals, a free market and the common law which preserves both. Similarly, in his famous book The Open Society and its Enemies, Popper argues that the only way to prevent the rise of tyrants is to establish institutions which will ensure they never come to power.
However, while speaking before staff and students at their old university, President Higgins claimed these men provided intellectual nourishment for a ‘utopian vision of the Right’, one in which ‘politics would now take second place to unregulated markets’. And ‘standing in support of unregulated markets, of unaccountable capital flows, of virtual financial products, are scholars who frequently claim the legitimation provided by a university’. I can only take that to mean that scholars who take the side of Hayek and Popper should have no place in a university.
For nearly twenty years I lectured in various universities. For much of that time, I defended the likes of Hayek and Popper because, when left-wing intellectuals were sucking up to Stalin and Mao, both of those brave men were denouncing despotism. And it is this, much more than their economic theories, which, I believe, continues to enrage surviving Marxists.
I did not need the ‘legitimation’ of a university to hold such views. I came to them through reasoned reflection on the human condition and the political models best suited to it. In fact, I began as a leftist intellectual who published books on themes very close to those highly regarded by President Higgins. Steadily, however, I rejected my early leftism because I recognised that, wherever tried and tested, it was a moral and political disaster.
Still, I would never say that leftist intellectuals should have no place in a university. The true function of a university is to let all flowers bloom. The greater the diversity of ideas, the better it is for both students and society.
For President Higgins, however, universities must ‘recover the moral purpose of original thought’ and ‘emancipatory scholarship’. I don’t know what the President means by ‘emancipatory scholarship’, but given that he keeps dropping the names of Marxist intellectuals, I suppose it must mean Marxist theory. How else to explain his language during his Manchester University lecture, when, in the course of attacking Hayek yet again, the President remarked: ‘The changes that have taken place and the relationship between labour and capital have been such that hot money can move in real time’.
Spoken like a true socialist. But is it the role of a president to publicly peddle a socialist agenda? Is it his role to slam intellectuals and economists who don’t agree with his assessment of the fiscal crisis? And is it within his constitutional remit to imply that, by seeking 'legitimation' in a university, such intellectuals are undermining its moral purpose?
No, it is not, for the simple reason that the Irish President is not elected to push ideology. Like the Queen, he is there to serve all the people of Ireland and not just those who share his political bias. However, by consistently attacking ‘right-wing’ intellectuals and their followers, the President is proving that, despite being constitutionally restricted, he cannot control his leftist instincts.
The most disturbing example of this was when, earlier this month, President Higgins launched a new book – Up the Republic- by Irish left-wing author and journalist Fintan O’Toole. First, what business has a Head of State launching any book? More importantly, what business has he publicly endorsing the views of a high priest of fashionable causes like Fintan O’Toole?
True, the President began his speech by stating that he was not endorsing the book’s content. However, he quickly proceeded to state that this did not require him to ‘recant long-held convictions or resile from previously expressed views’. As president, it is one thing to privately retain long-held convictions, but quite another to publicly commend the ‘courageousness’ of all those who contributed to Mr O’Toole’s book, and to hope that it would ‘propel its readers into action’.
What else is this but a ringing endorsement? So, too, was his subsequent comment that the current crisis was not just caused by economic failings, but by a ‘failure of policymakers and influence formers to adequately challenge prevailing assumptions and models that were regarded as holy writ’. In other words, if we had listened to ‘courageous’ influence formers like Fintan O’Toole, rather than those informed by Hayek and Popper, we might not be in such a mess.
I wonder how the President might respond if I invited him to launch one of my books? The following episode may provide a clue. I recall organising the launch of a friend’s first novel back in the Nineties. My friend, a major Irish intellectual in the liberal tradition, invited the President, who was then Minister for Arts and Culture, to launch the book. I still remember his first words: ‘I very nearly declined to launch this novel because I sensed it was too elitist’.
I doubt, in sum, the President would accept my invitation because it seems that, for him, a real intellectual must chant from the same Marxist hymn-book as Fintan O’Toole or the late Eric Hobsbawm. However, if he were really serious about confronting the ‘intellectual crisis’ he thinks exists, he would convene a presidential seminar and bring together intellectuals of all stripes – including yours truly.
The reason I suspect he won’t do that is because our presence there would only prove that all this talk of an 'intellectual crisis' is nonsense. Just because many intellectuals aren’t card-carrying socialists does not mean we are in the midst of an intellectual emergency. Moreover, it might also highlight the hollowness of the left-wing dogma to which the President is so attached.
Either way, there is no justification – constitutional or moral – for an Irish president to use his office to promote an ideological agenda which, upon being elected, he should have deposited at the door of his official residence. And there is certainly no constitutional provision permitting him to travel to Britain to lecture the heirs of Popper and Hayek on why they should reject the teachings of those great men.
If Mr Higgins continues to brush against established constitutional boundaries, he may yet face a ‘crisis’ of his own. Only this time, it definitely won’t be ‘intellectual’.