Sir, - Kevin Myers rightly denounces the sleazy and dishonest thinking that would excuse, as the product of some kind of historical necessity, murders committed in the name of republicanism (An Irishman's Diary, July 7th). We direly need to face up to our shameful record, not only to honour the victims Mr Myers names, but also to prevent future Omaghs.
Failure to name the evil we have committed will result in the moral coarsening of future generations, as children are led to believe that the IRA atrocities of the past 30 years were basically justified. I do not think the history books of my childhood, myth-ridden though they were, encouraged this kind of brutal cynicism in the young.
Politically, as well, our benign attitude to the militant nationalism on which this State wisely turned its back in its early years risks undermining the high level of democratic thought and performance which has distinguished the State since its foundation. Mr Myers correctly signals the objective collusion between corrupt politicians and the revival of a violent and undemocratic ideology.
Intellectually, too, there is nothing more enfeebling than an infatuation with the confusionist and reactionary rhetoric of a nationalism that has nothing to offer modern Ireland. This is demonstrated in Stephen Howe's book Ireland and Empire (Oxford University Press). Howe shows how a debased literary-critical theory of post-colonialism has been used to give trendiness to an emotive patriotism thriving on ignorance of historical facts and wilful blindness to them. Playing footsie with Sinn Fein's anachronistic and paltry world-view has doomed many of our leading intellectuals to puerility and impotence, when they could have been reflecting on the real needs of their country at a time of radical change. The shoddy thinking of these intellectuals has in turn offered validation to the terrorists.
Howe's book administers a long overdue cold douche to our armchair revolutionaries. A careful reading of it, and an effort at least to imagine the alternative perspectives it opens up, could help cure us of the grandiose and xenophobic cult of an imaginary Irish identity that continues to skew our thinking. - Yours, etc.,
Rev Joseph S. O'Leary, Maison de Vincennes, Nakano-ku 165-0022, Tokyo, Japan.