Talk:Éamon de Valera/Archive 3

Apology
The sentence "The Republic of Ireland has yet to apologise for De Valera's response to Hitler's death" implies that an apology is due. As deV said "I could have had a diplomatic illness, but I abhor that king of thing". I suggest that the paragraph be removed as it is pov ClemMcGann 18:53, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Agree. The statement that he paid his condolences and was criticised for it is enough. No one expects an apology to came, nor is there any reason why there should be one. We know that de Valera's policy was totally correct based on the neutrality he took during the Emergency. Anyway who would give such an apology and to whom? ww2censor 19:02, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Agree. It's also not the function of the current President McAleese to apologize for anything, unless she is instructed to do so by the government.86.42.202.115 12:33, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Agree. Use of the word apologise presumes that the action for which the apology is demanded is morally wrong. This is a highly POV contention, not only between many Irish people and many British people but also within Ireland itself. If not removed, this sentence should at least be rephrased in a manner that does not imply moral judgement on Dev's actions. Sean an Scuab (talk) 16:55, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Illegitimacy and the church
"While this would be irrelevant to many today, one result of illegitimacy in the late 19th/early 20th century was that one was barred from a career in the Roman Catholic Church. Éamon de Valera was throughout his life a deeply religious man, who in death asked to be buried in a religious habit. There are a number of occasions where de Valera seriously contemplated entering the religious life like his half-brother, Fr. Thomas Wheelwright. Yet he did not do so, and apparently received little encouragement from the priests whose advice he sought. In his biography of de Valera, Tim Pat Coogan speculated about whether questions surrounding de Valera's legitimacy may have been a deciding factor."

I've removed this section because it's not correct. As it says in the article from the old Catholic Encyclopedia, he still could have become a cleric by entering religious life. See the oCE article on "Defect of Birth" --206.15.101.44 13:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure why that happened, but I got signed out, the above edit was mine.--Samuel J. Howard 13:59, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * So I've rewritten the section to say that the biographer speculated incorrectly. Please don't restore the incorrect information about illegitimacy.  --Samuel J. Howard 03:47, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Nice rewrite. Am I not correct in thinking, though, that he couldn't have been ordained to any... um, don't know the correct term, but let me call it 'priestly' order. E.g., he couldn't have become a Jesuit, because that order is composed of full priests. But he could have become a Christian Brother, because they are not priest? Bastun BaStun not BaTsun 12:52, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I removed the text about this subject because it was sheer unsourced speculation. --Red King (talk) 13:52, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

America 1920
I've slimmed down Mr Campos and addeds refs for his fundraising - gross & net - not quite $6m.Red Hurley 14:39, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

A notable failure?
I hope this won't be too much of a personal curiosity instead of a constructive comment - but I am wondering about some lines in the final 'Overview' section that state: "A notable failure was his attempt to reverse the provision of the 1937 Constitution in relation to the electoral system. On retiring as Taoiseach in 1959, he proposed that the Proportional Representation system enshrined in that constitution should be replaced. A constitutional referendum to ratify this was comprehensively defeated by the people." Why did de Valera want to reform the electoral system? There are no citations about it. To me it's unclear whether this is supposed to mean a failure of statesmanship or judgment on de Valera's part, or simply to report that the proposal failed to pass the referendum. I assume from the rest of the Overview that the former is more likely. But why should this be considered among failures that might 'outweigh his achievements' and diminish his reputation among today's historians? Coming as it does between criticism of defrauding Press investors and 'disastrous' economic policy it just seems weirdly trivial, as if part of the story is missing. Independent of the article, I would really like to know more about this incident if anyone can enlighten me.

As regards the article, I know I don't really have the authority to pronounce on this, but in my opinion the Overview as a whole is kinda confusing and confused. If it's supposed to be an overview of criticisms of de Valera rather than a general overview/closing summary type thing, then the title is misleading. It also spends time refuting its own point about his effect on Catholic conservatism and makes the dubious claim that de Valera's idealism directly resulted in 'national stagnation' (which is backed up by a quote about his entire generation that attributes the stagnation to the Church, the IRA, and the economy). I think some of the 1st two paragraphs could be reorganized as well. Just my two cents. The article is great! And I'm sorry if this is irritating or in bad taste, it's my first post. --Differentpolice 15:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

IPA
Is there really a need to have this after his name. It's not like it is a strange name or a funny spelt one. BigDunc 20:18, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It's handy for non-Irish speakers who know IPA. How is a French or Japanese speaker supposed to know how Éamon is pronounced. It's standard in many Irish biography articles. I have added it back in. Snappy56 20:28, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thats ok but this is English WP and I just thought that there was no need for it but it's not doing any harm so might aswell leave.BigDunc 20:32, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Good call —Preceding unsigned comment added by Buyo (talk • contribs) 14:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

From Civil War to Prime Minister
The article, in its present state, fails to explain how de Valera went from suffering civil war defeat with the anti-Treaty Republicans to leading the same side to victory, less than 10 years later, in the 1932 general election. How did he and Fianna Fail suddenly become popular enough to win the election? --Tocino 23:52, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree, and in fact I believe this article needs a serious looking at, as it stands it is a fundamentally hostile interpretation of de Valera's life, an interpretation that is compounded by the fact that it fails to mention anything about his political rise after the Civil War instead concentrating on the nuances of the Oath which seems a bit pointless. However it seems par for the course with this article. There is also the section on his speech that seems to be full of opinion not to mention the overview which is merely a list of criticisms of de Valera. There are probably more that I may have missed but as I said this article is of a very poor standard and needs a complete overhaul if not scrapped and started again. Cliste 21:23, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I've never heard of that happening before, where an entire article is scrapped and re-written. However, I would be in favor of that drastic measure in this case, as the whole article reflects negatively on its subject. Whenever I read this article I get the sense that the author is blaming de Valera for modern history's inability to achieve a United Ireland. --Tocino 01:52, 26 August (UTC)
 * Well I'm not too sure of procedure myself but it is the worst article I have come across, the kind that gives wiki its reputation as a bad and unreliable source. As for the author I think he/she just likes to blame dev! Anyway I have been chipping away at it and will continue to do so. Cliste 01:03, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Bias It seems to me that this page is biased towards the Michael Collins/Free State side.It is reinforcing the anti-de Valera/anti-republican opinion. The author clearly does not like deV and has gone to some trouble to discredit de Valera making him out to be a spineless coward stylising himself as a hero. I agree with UTC this list seems to be merely a list of criticisms of de Velara instead of a balanced and impartial description of his life. De Velara was a great political thinker and devoted his life to Irish freedom and rights, not a devious liar who deluded the Irish public. This article is weak, biased and opinionated it spends far too much time on de Velaras supposed illegitamate birth. This disturbing trend seems to have spread to other Irish independance/civil war articles biased towards the treatites. DeVelara was a great political mind who deserves respect.[WF] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.41.67.178 (talk) 21:18, August 30, 2007 (UTC)
 * Another area of bias... take a look at the Irish nationalism article. At the bottom there is a good-sized section titles "Criticism of Irish nationalism". OK it's debatable whether that should be included in the article as there's not much in it besides some polls of Irish protestants saying they don't feel Irish and a few POV sentences with no sources. However my issue is looking at other (insert nation here) nationalism articles, I can't find any that have a "Criticism of (Insert nation here) nationalism". For example there is not Criticism of British nationalism section in the British nationalism article... same can be said of the American nationalism article. So why is Irish nationalism being criticized while the others aren't? Ridiculous. --Tocino 18:21, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Nationality Categories
I have removed the categories Cuban-Americans, Cuban-Irish people and Spanish-American from the article because there is no evidence that De Valera's father was from Cuba or was a Spanish American. I have left the category Spanish-Irish people because Catherine Coll said De Valera's father was Spanish. Without getting into the Who was Dev's father debate, Juan Vivion de Valera managed to live his entire life without leaving any paper trail (See Tim Pat Coogan's biography). So without knowing definitely where De Valera's father was from, these categories are speculative. Snappy56 16:54, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Fact?
"from ambushes and other tactics that were allowing the British to successfully portray it as a terrorist group,[neutrality disputed] and to " I agree with this statement and see it as fact rather than opinion 58.107.193.254 04:21, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Article rating
An anonymous IP suggested that this article was incorrectly rated as A-class, and changed the rating to B-class, claiming there was no discussion or rationale. However, the article was peer reviewed (albeit only short commentary was made and no conclusion was reported) and is a former FAC.

Given that a couple of years has passed since the PR, and the article was cited, perhaps this article should either have it's rating reverted, or be put forth as a candidate for a suitable rating, or both. -- Setanta 22:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

With reference to what I said, I'm pasting the auto peer review output here for reference:

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question. You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Setanta 22:38, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.[?]
 * If this article is about a person, please add  along with the required parameters to the article - see Persondata for more information.[?]
 * Per Manual of Style (headings), headings generally do not start with articles ('the', 'a(n)'). For example, if there was a section called  ==The Biography== , it should be changed to  ==Biography== .[?]
 * This article may need to undergo summary style, where a series of appropriate subpages are used. For example, if the article is United States, then an appropriate subpage would be History of the United States, such that a summary of the subpage exists on the mother article, while the subpage goes into more detail.[?]
 * Please make the spelling of English words consistent with either American or British spelling, depending upon the subject of the article. Examples include: honor (A) (British: honour), honour (B) (American: honor), behaviour (B) (American: behavior), meter (A) (British: metre), defence (B) (American: defense), recognise (B) (American: recognize), criticise (B) (American: criticize), isation (B) (American: ization), travelled (B) (American: traveled).
 * Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
 * Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “ All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
 * Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.[?]
 * That classification dispute was with the Biography Project's classification that had been added August 10, 2006 and is now more than a year old. Since then other projects have added the B-class rating (maybe they just followed suit) and several constructive edits have been made that make this assessment a new topic. This depends on which WikiProject you wish should reassess the article; you can always ask for an assessment from the WikiProject Ireland here and I am sure the other projects have similar request facilities. By rights this article should be at least a Good Article if not a Featured Article though it failed as a Featured article candidate in 2005 and it may now still fail the newer standards required. Your suggestion to consult Tony1's is a useful one. While he is quite a tough critic, his advise is appropriate and constructive. If it is not a GA, then it really should not be rated as a A-class article, so let's see if we can bring it to GA first. Who is here to help? Cheers ww2censor 04:22, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Apollo 11 Goodwill message
I added the section about the message sent to the moon by de Valera for NASA. The source is:



Fabfivefreddy (talk) 07:12, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Quotes secction added
I have added a quotes section of some of Dev's views. Will add more as I continue to read Ferriters book. 194.46.254.89 (talk) 22:42, 31 December 2007 (UTC)