How Afghanistan led us to the Voice, an 800 year old story about the Fitzgerald family.

The reason we pursued the story of Afghanistan was our interest in the nuclear arms race. We had been introduced to the players when we attended a rally for the SALT II Treaty back in 1979 to interview the supporters for a documentary. Up until the Soviet invasion in December, 1979 all nuclear agreements had been governed by "Mutual Assured Destruction." This principle dictated that if either side used their nuclear weapons, the other side would retaliate in kind and neither side would win. This realization kept a strict limit on the numbers of weapons each side maintained.

A group known as Team B had been lobbying since the early 50's against this restriction, arguing that the Soviets were cheating and planned to take over the world. When the Soviets invaded Team B finally had the proof they'd been looking for and the restrictions came off. In the summer of 1980, six months after the Soviet invasion - two men from the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, published an article in Foreign Policy Magazine called Victory is Possible which cited the Just War Doctrine of the Catholic Church as reason to stop abiding by the principle of Mutual Assured Destruction. They argued that it was immoral not to prepare to fight a nuclear war and that we should be prepared to win at all costs.

We found the idea that the U.S. was using a medieval doctrine to justify Armageddon amazing but it caught on. As Poles, Pope John Paul II was fiercely anti-Russian as was his fellow countryman Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski. As both pushed for confrontation with the Soviets, it came as no surprise that Reagan was elected on an anti-arms control platform that year.

What we didn't know at the time was that the Just War Doctrine of the Catholic Church had been written by the Papal Nuncio for the Fitzgerald family in Ireland during the 1570's. As a Fitzgerald I knew something of my family's history. A terrible war, brought on the Fitzgeralds by the English destroyed much of the family's power and depopulated the Irish countryside. Now I began to see how long my family had been involved in international and religious politics and that the Just War document was just one event in a very long and quite mystical family quest.

From the time the Anglo-Norman Fitzgeralds arrived in Ireland in II 70 as mercenary invaders for Henry II of England, they seem to have been looking for something, and over a short period of years became so enamored of the last remnants of Celtic Society as to become "more Irish than the Irish." Born of a Celtic Princess of Wales from the Tewder line and a Norman father - they settled in the most mystical part of Ireland, the southwest - in the ancient kingdom of Desmond and became the Earls of that province.

Celtic civilization had once spread from Central Europe to Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Greece, France and Britain. Within it was incorporated much of Indo/Aryan mythology. By 1170 Ireland was the last pure refuge of this ancient way of life in which the mystical world (Other world) and this world joined very much in unison. The Fitzgerald family took on the task of defending this mystical way of life. Over 400 years the family and related clans acquired over a million acres of farmland (beyond the English tax man) and so became the bane of the English.

By the 16th century the newly Protestant English decided the Catholic Fitzgeralds were too much of a danger and waged war on them constantly. By 1583 their power was broken and all but a handful of the family who went over to the English were stripped of their titles and dispossessed. But they remained on the land.

I have secured numerous records regarding my great, great grandfather and his farm in Abbeyfeale which continues to this day. Most recently, I have consulted the Knight of Glin, the last remaining titled Fitzgerald and the course of my investigation discovered that his title is regarded as the Black Knight. Strangely enough I had written a Black Knight into my story already as a central character, not knowing the real one was still alive.

The story of the Voice is about the transformation of the world and the special role of the Fitzgerald family. It aims to make people aware of what is going on around them in a very special way. Despite our technology we have very little control of anything if we don't make the hard decisions to make things right again for everyone, we will lose the world we love. It is very much a personal story and seeing what happened in Afghanistan opened the door.

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