Friday, July 22, 2005
One community of law
Via Newshound, Newton Emerson picked up on the statement by Sinn Féin MLA Willie Clarke on the drive-by shooting in Newcastle on Monday - “We need the community to get involved” - which I noted at the time, and asks “what does he mean by the community, exactly?”
As Newton points out, the ubiquitous community label is too readily used in an attempt to legitimise and disguise other agendas -
Because community implies grassroots legitimacy it is an ideal disguise for such top-down exercises in social control. Being so deliberately ill-defined it is also a tricky disguise to unmask. But unmask it we must if we are not to be told who we are, what we are, how to think and where to think it by everyone anxious to group us under their own agendas. A fair society, as St Augustine observed, must comprise one community of law.
Read the whole thing..
