clipped from: www.irishtimes.com We used not to be like this. We had lives. We did not guard every single bureaucratic regulation with a jealous fury. Once, we might have seen someone jumping a queue and smiled at his brass neck or just thought that perhaps he faced some urgent circumstance.
Once, Ireland was world famous for being a place where everything was not reduced to “ethics” and “equality” and rules.
At the heart of this fundamental change in us, I believe, is the way, over the past decade in particular, the State has begun to bear down on citizens in previously inconceivable ways and dip deeper into our pockets to pay for its incompetent attentions. Gradually, this is driving us mad.
This is just one of the subtle and barely comprehended tyrannies that replaced the old kinds – turning us into moralistic bloodhounds who sniff the air for the scent of sinners.
