Sir, - I find myself in total disagreement with your editorial of August 13th. Your claims that Youth Defence's protest at the use of the Broadcasting Acts 1960 and 1988 to prevent its advertisement being shown, is intolerant and totalitarian surprise me. They come from a newspaper which for decades has seen itself as an independent voice among the Irish media.
The totalitarianism and intolerance lie not with Youth Defence, but with the Government, the IRTC, RTE and indeed yourself, for denying what should be a fundamental right in any democracy: freedom of debate, information, and expression where all avenues of the media are concerned. For too long now the citizens of this State have had their values dictated to them by the Catholic Church in the 1950s and 1960s, and now in the 1980s and 1990s by the upholders of the Liberal Agenda.
No State can truly call itself democratic and have all forms of broadcasting subject to a ban on political advertising, not can it have a system in which those deciding on the suitability of advertising are government scions. To say that the present situation sounds the death knell of democracy is to state simple fact.
Tolerance means allowing all sides to have their say. The fact that your newspaper has condemned Youth Defence for protesting at being denied the right to distribute factual information found in any Junior Cert. science textbook is a sad reflection on the double think and hypocrisy which exists in much of the Irish media at the moment. For years there were calls by "liberals" for a debate on abortion; now we see them stifling that very debate.
Yours, etc.,
Herbert Road, Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4.