Somewhere between the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688-89 and the mayhem in Belfast last weekend, the rallying cry of 'civil and religious liberty' got lost in translation.
The notion that every individual should enjoy freedom of religion, represented on its banners as the open Bible, encapsulated the appeal of Orangeism down the centuries to members of the Protestant minority in Ireland.
Many of other religions and none have no difficulty with this principle – though they would greatly prefer it to be more consistently applied.
After all, from within the Catholic minority in the north the language of 'civil rights' emerged in the 1960s to challenge religious domination.
Today's world is one of so-called 'a la carte' Catholicism – where some make their own decisions on questions of personal morality – rather than follow a supposedly overweening church.
It is also a multi-cultural environment in which no one religious group should be given preferential treatment.
In this context, the Orange Order appears starkly guilty of a gross abdication of responsibility.
For the other side of the coin of 'civil and religious liberty' for every individual is the taking of individual responsibility for one's actions – an idea at the heart of the belief systems of main Protestant denominations.
Yet at yesterday's (Wednesday) Orange Order media conference in Belfast, everyone else was scapegoated for the horrifying events of the weekend.
The grand master, Robert Saulters, claimed that "ordinary, decent and reasonable men" had been "goaded into behaving out of character by the authorities and their insistence on appeasing and rewarding nationalists at the expense of loyalists".
Well, let us be clear. The civil rights movement rightly secured an historic levelling up of the socio-economic position of Catholics in Northern Ireland.
There are still gaps, and recent research – which the Department for Social Development sat upon – belies the myth that 'loyalist communities' are more disadvantaged.
Indeed, the saddest feature of this sterile debate is that, while narrowly sectarian solidarities prevail, the gulf in income and wealth between different social classes remains unchallenged.
Nor is it true to say that loyalists have been done down by the government, set on advantaging nationalists.
Indeed, the vast majority of Protestants have been stunned by the willingness of government to indulge their loyalist co-religionists, whom they see as thugs and corner-boys.
Here again many can share common cause: there is no sectarian monopoly on concern about the willingness of 10 Downing Street to make private deals with paramilitaries of very doubtful morality.
Most Protestants no longer recognise in themselves the claims made by the Orange Order supposedly on their behalf.
The Order wants them to walk, not talk.
In reality, they are already walking away from it.
