And the most ridiculous use of the word community is in the phrase "international community" - surely the greatest contradiction in terms ever.

Interesting, readable and thoughtful as always.
I think Newton glosses over the fact that electoral support legitimises assertions of representation of a given community. Top-downism is limited in any democracy because we can turf the pochails out at the next vote.

In any event, wasn't Clarke, by saying "we need the community to get involved, and not "we the community need to get involved", explicitly avoiding precisely the kind of presuptuous assumption of community leadership Emerson is complaining about?

The St Augustine quote is lovely (especially in the Papal News). However, I rather think that Newton doesn't think it through. Clarke's point, I think, would be that the community has to become involved in the resolution of this issue because current official arrangements do not afford a single, consistent "community of law", such as to attract the confidence of the community it needs to serve. Just because you vote SDLP doesn't mean you're comfortable with current policing arrrangements.

I think NA has a lot of good stuff to say. I'm sometimes concerned that he cannot hear a republican (or more precisely, a SF) message without deliberately misinterpreting it to mean the most negative thing possible.

Liberal unionists such as he need to understand that we look with different eyes than them, and hear with different ears.

"Top-downism is limited in any democracy because we can turf the pochails out at the next vote."

A vote might get rid of the first part of SFPIRA, but not the second, a part which has not shown any particular respect for democracy and human rights over the years.

Until SF support the police, invoking 'The Community' could just be SF gathering people up in order to impress them with how the armed wing can still intimidate juvenilles, the source of most neighbourhood complaints.

MCT,
Elected politicians can at most claim to represent those who voted for them, not everyone in the constituency which elected them. And even then, many voters do so reluctantly because they simply have a greater dislike for the alternatives.

Even when a canditate I happily vote for does win, it doesn't give him/her to right to speak for me. I speak for me.

If we don't like their message, we chuch them out next time around. I think this sort of means that they have retrospectively lost their mandate - i.e. they only have a mandate if the win the next election as well.