We are dab hands at commemoration, though not at examining the events we commemorate or how we've lived up to the invariably noble ideals of a glorious past.
The first Dail sat 80 years ago, on January 21st, 1919. It confirmed the Declaration of Independence as proclaimed in 1916 and ratified the Democratic Programme on which it proposed to build the republic.
The programme was radical, even by the standards of the time: two years after the Russian Revolution, months after the end of the first World War, on the eve of the Peace Conference at Versailles where the map of Europe would be redrawn.
My father-in-law, Frank Kelly, was one of those who stood guard inside the Mansion House while the First Dail was in session. He was a Londoner, a member of the IRB who'd never been in Ireland until he arrived to take part in the Rising.
Three years later he was on Michael Collins's headquarters staff and not only helped guard the Dail but took part in the removal of one of its members, Eamon de Valera, from Lincoln Jail. (An English accent came in handy.)
Fifty years on, the Rising was not so much commemorated as celebrated, with special fervour and for an obvious reason: a Presidential election was in the offing and Dev, the last surviving commandant, not only held the office but was a candidate for re-election.
The First Dail was commemorated with considerably less enthusiasm in 1969 and there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm for an examination of the Democratic Programme and how governments of the new state had measured up to it.
The programme, you see, had declared that sovereignty extended not only to the people but to material possessions, soil and its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes "within the nation".
Invoking the authority of "our first President, Padraig Mac Phiarais," it had announced: "With him we reaffirm that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare."
It insisted that the Government's first duty was to ensure that "no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing or shelter" and that it should introduce "a sympathetic scheme for the care of the nation's aged and infirm".
With other governments, it should devise "a standard of social and industrial legislation with a view to a general and lasting improvement in the conditions under which the working classes live and labour".
High-minded stuff, as some politicians and commentators say nowadays when they are about to decide that in the real world it's all unrealistic and unaffordable.
The real world, they would have you know, is where there are no children or elderly in need of care, illness is scheduled so as not to tax the health services, and the best that can be done for the working class is to "incentivise" them.
Frank and I talked about the Rising, the Democratic Programme and the success or failure of the republic, over pints in Murphy's of Rathgar, on our way home from the commemorations in 1966 and 1969.
He took a view common to many, perhaps most, of those who'd had a hand in the War of Independence: the aim was to set up an independent state, not to decide what kind of state it should be.
The Democratic Programme, as Ruairi Quinn pointed out on Dunlop and Finlay the other night, was the work of the Labour leader, Tom Johnson, which explained its egalitarian tone.
In Frank's view, it had been adopted by the Sinn Fein members, 27 of whom were present in the Mansion House (34 were in jail) for the sole purpose of ensuring Labour's continuing support in the campaign for independence.
"We won the right to run our own show," he said. "It was up to those who followed us to decide what they wanted to make of it."
This, as far as he was concerned, was a matter of fact. What he and his colleagues had set out to do was to secure independence. And nothing would be allowed to interfere with that.
He drank his pint and returned, practical as usual, to the business of guarding the first Dail: decisions recorded in an accounts ledger, all but indecipherable lest they fall into enemy hands; every scrap of paper picked up, pocketed and burned because you never knew what members' notes might tell.
All we knew about it in the 1960s was how secret it had been. We hadn't heard of the Democratic Programme and its egalitarian tone; indeed, most people of my generation had heard little or nothing about the First Dail.
But the programme's tone was echoed in the social and political campaigns of the time.
The Dublin Housing Action Committee won support for its demands on behalf of the city's homeless. Other groups concentrated on the ownership and exploitation of fisheries and mineral resources. The women's movement gathered strength.
But the 1970s did not turn out to be socialist and, as attention switched first to Northern Ireland, then to the economy, it seemed as if the demand that Labour must wait - acknowledged by the party in 1918 - would forever undermine its ambitions.
Now, as Labour and Democratic Left unite, some in Fianna Fail and Fine Gael look to a resumption of the 2 1/2 -party system, though with a new condition: Fianna Fail is as open to offers as Fine Gael ever was.
Offers of support, of course.
But we are as far as ever from the ideals of the Democratic Programme. The problems which gave rise to the promise of 1918 provoked the campaigns of the 1960s. And they're still with us, though with some differences.
Now, we are richer and more divided than ever. The value of every service, every need, every political promise, is measured in cash.
This week Brian Cowen, who is Minister for Health, at a moment of indisputable crisis in the health services, told Pat Kenny: "I represent the taxpayer."
He saw nothing odd about giving an account of himself which, from beginning to end, was described in terms certain to please accountants but to leave doctors, nurses and patients with a sense of dismay.
The Democratic Programme had the audacity to declare that the rights of private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare. Its authors were clearly stirred by the spirit of the times.
The spirit of the late 1990s is less visionary. And some of the most powerful people in the State are determined that, come what may, that's how it will remain.
If you have any doubt of their determination to ensure the primacy of property you should visit Dublin Castle to hear their lawyers make the case.
And if Labour needs an issue around which to mobilise its forces, that's the place for its campaign to begin.