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Letter: The lion and the fox

Many kinds of animals are used to illustrate the lessons of politics and statecraft: Here I will mention only two, the lion and the fox.

Several familiar historical analogies are used and reused to make political points; here I will use one that is probably unfamiliar to most readers and let them draw from it what they will: the tragedy of Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator.

Almost two centuries ago, Daniel O'Connell was the lion of the Irish Catholics' movement for freedom and representation in the British parliament. At the time, the only Irish who could be elected to parliament were Protestants. Both the Protestants (oranges) and Catholics (greens) were Gaelic and often considered themselves Irish, but the former had come from Scotland at the behest of the British Crown. Thus, they were considered loyal to England. In fact, these Orangemen, as a rule, were more loyal supporters of "England's cruel red" than the Gaels who remained under the blue flag of Scotland.

Though the Orangemen were very much in the minority, they had the notion that they had some inalienable right to rule over the Irish who had been in Ireland for centuries. Ireland was considered a historical and inseparable part of the British Empire.

Lawyer Daniel O'Connell was an uncompromising agitator for Irish Catholic rights. Undeterred by persecution, he and his followers eventually forced parliament to pass the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. O'Connell was the first Irish Catholic to serve in parliament. By this time, he and his followers had gained recognition of many other rights for Irish Catholics.

Once O'Connell entered parliament, however, he ran with the foxes. To use another metaphor, he became a horse trader. Through a series of compromises, he traded away some rights in order to gain others. It's a rare politician who can be both a lion and a fox (Lee Teng-hui [李登輝] comes to mind).

A political movement is most effective when the leader is a lion who is advised by foxes. A fox in a position of leadership almost always outfoxes himself. Daniel O'Connell learned that lesson the hard way; he had lost the Catholics more rights than he had gained for them.

President Chen Sui-bian's (陳水扁) biggest mistake was to engage in a kind of one-sided compromise known as back-burning: endorsing popular parts of onerous measures in order to take some of the fuel from those measures as a whole. He risked burning down the forest he was trying to save. In the process, he lost allies and emboldened enemies.

According to one biographer, Daniel O'Connell resigned from parliament and spent the rest of his life a bitter, broken man with little following. It was another century before the Emerald Isle gained its rightful place among the world's nations.

Jerry Mills
Shilin

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