Bismarck called politics the art of the possible. There might be truth in that. But fundamentally, as the arch pragmatist knew well, politics helps mediate the natural struggle between the individual and the collective. Done well, politics helps nurture the spark of the former to help power the progress of the latter. Arguably, there are few better examples over the past sixty years than Ireland. The census of 1961 confirmed a bleak reality. The population of the Republic of Ireland had fallen to another post-Famine low of just 2.8 million. As the rest of post-war Europe enjoyed the fruits of…

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