Moral compass gone south

I’m gobsmacked. Ireland has lost its way morally. The values that should underpin a state have been turned upside down for all to see.  Anyone who’s seen a picture of yesterday’s  funeral of a prominent gangster will know why.  This man who was himself shot dead is believed to have been involved by gardaí in a number of killings arising out of his criminal activities in North Dublin.  We know that much petty crime is about finding the cash for drugs and that drugs in Ireland is big money.  The murder victim’s coffin was draped in the national flag and accompanied by men dressed in paramilitary uniform.  A graveside oration was accorded at the graveside, something usually reserved for someone who has served the state or been a member of the garda or defence forces.  Media comment seems to have missed something that is glaringly obvious. What right has this man’s loved ones to subvert the state in this way to cloak a life of crime with respectability of the symbols of state?   

There is a roll call of communities that have been thrashed by this type of crook.  These people have set back communities decades and destroyed Ireland.  I understand that as one of the offertory gifts at the funeral mass was the 1916 proclamation.  Sadly the murdered crook never took the time to read it.  One of the people who signed it was James Connolly who in his day was anti alcohol as he understood the damage that alcohol addiction did to families and saw the control of the pub trade by employers and payment of wages in pubs as anti family.  Surely any follower of Connolly can see parallels with the modern drug trade?

Let’s taken as read the standard line of treating all the children equally and ask the 32CSM about the life’s chances in this state of some young children who are born in the wrong place at the wrong time and end up addicted.  Another line of the proclamation asks God “Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine”. Is the drugs trade not inhuman or cowardly?  

But the question that needs to be put to the hundreds who turned up to the funeral is if they cared for the deceased would they not have served his ultimate interests better by going to the garda with whatever information they had to see the man convicted and the crimes that he was central to, some of them murder resolved for the sake of those other victims and their families who are equally entitled to justice?

There is something deeply troubling and menacing when this man’s supporters can obstruct garda policing of the funeral on an otherwise peaceful sunny day in an ordinary suburb.  Unless society deals with this type of crook and tthey are sent down for time commensurate with their deeds we are going nowhere morally.