Response to Apparently, the Irish media caused 9/11
Mr. Mc gann - or I should say dear fellow New Yorker, I'm always
struck by the changes that come over so many who try a life in
America. I won't presume that YOUR attitudes have changed
since there ARE the rare few in Ireland whose thinking is
top-rate, but just that one cannot know what American life is like
without being in it. And American life gives rise to an American
ethos and public philosophy, which, regardless of one's political
views, are more like being in a process than anything else. You
have to be in it to understand it. The letters to the editors of the
Irish Times and the Irish Independent after September 11, 2001
really made this point for me since so many who wrote "home"
from the US were critical of Irish coverage and Irish attitudes. In
the parlance, they had all become "Americanized", which is a
defensive patronization that you too will endure when you return
to Ireland (it's an old tradition of course - Joyce made great fun of
the phenomena, especially in The Dead). Here's an address
where you can read all of those letters:
http://home.kimo.com.tw/theirishletter/index.htm
I was in Ireland in 2001 when Adams went to Cuba, thereby
intentionally burning some of his bridges in the US. I felt I was
witness to something truly historic in that, not to mention shrewd,
and so to see so many in the Republic subsequently follow this
pied piper so uncritically was hardly a surprise. But with the
revolution that's happened in the media, and especially the
medium we're using right now, Irish people seem unaware that
there will be consequences to their excesses. It isn't like that day
in May 1945, the day the Germans surrendered, when a bunch of
yahoos with Haughey in the lead could march to the US
embassy and take out the windows with stones all unnoticed by
the world.
But I want to stress that I don't begrudge anyone their protest if
they are in disagreement with my views. I'm only offended by the
reflex, over-the-top, mendacious anti-Americanism that made
me leave Ireland in disgust.
Mr. Mc gann, we must set our sights on a future generation in
Ireland that we hope will be more politically sophisticated.
Perhaps they'll be better able to appreciate their ancestor
Edmund Burke who understood that the moral order of the
temporal world must necessarily include some evil by reason of
original sin. He believed that men ought not to reject what is
good in tradition merely because there is some admixture of evil
in it. In man's confused situation, advantages may often lie in
balances and compromises between good and evil, even
between one evil and another. The important part of wisdom,
Burke believed, is to know how much evil should be tolerated.
What the current generation in Ireland doesn't grasp is that the
search for too great a purity only produces fresh corruption (e.g.
the UN scandal). Burke was especially critical of revolutionary
movements with noble humanitarian ends, not unlike Hannah
Arendt who identified "pity" as the origin of Robbespierre's terror.
Though Burke famously supported Irish and American
emancipation, his problem was with the French Revolution and
its programmatic "thinking".
As long as the current generation in Ireland are blind to the true
nature of tyranny and continue to tie notions of liberty to the old
programmed assumptions of the Cold War era and to the kinds
of ideals embraced by French Rationalism (even if it's the
"post-modern" kind) they're shrinking their future prospects and
their spirit of good sense and self-determination. It takes more
and more mental gymnastics to understand these phenomena
as ongoing responses to the "slave mentality" that Sean McBride
observed in Irish culture. And again, there will be consequences.
For instance, as Sinn Fein numbers improve in the Republic
American intolerance of terrorism will be sorely tested there.
As only one very tiny example of the current degradation of Irish
culture nothing instructed me better than an experience several
of us had in Dublin when we launched a volunteer litter squad
along the Grand Canal. Not only did NO IRISH PEOPLE EVER
JOIN US though we picked up litter for the better part of a
summer, but any cooperation from the city government was hard
to come by. The Council just couldn't understand why we'd be
out doing their job, and at every level we were rountinely asked
the same question: "But WHO authorized this?" (Now that you
live in the US can you understand why it was only Americans
who volunteered each Saturday morning to pick up Dublin's
trash?)
Forget this generation in Ireland. They're lost, and it won't do
Ireland's future any good to hide the widespread lies and
attitudes that have become pervasive there. To ready Ireland for
a more sensible future we should make known the attitudes of
the current lot. That's why I've set out to instruct each and every
fire and police department in the New York City area on why they
should no longer travel to Ireland or otherwise support Ireland in
any way. And let me tell you that people who VOLUNTEERED at
"ground zero" get very angry when they learn of Ireland's true
colors (I usually use statistics from the INDO or from
Eurobarometer since I want to keep it empirical).
Created By: timothy sweete