Specter on Our Side

I JUST want to say how great it is that Senator Arlen Specter has become an advocate for legalizing the Irish.

As a native of Philadelphia I am very proud of our senator who has taken so much abuse, much of it from his own party on this issue.

I contrast his stand to that of his fellow Republican Rick Santorum, who has viciously attacked the Senate bill in his own ads. Little wonder that he looks like he will lose badly in November.

Arlen Specter represents the best of Pennsylvania, a moderate Republican who speaks to all sides and does not employ the hate-filled language that Santorum and other Republicans have used against the undocumented.

I am a proud Democrat but am glad to say that I have voted for Senator Specter in every one of his races. He is the kind of man who makes me feel good about politicians — a rare thing these days.

Diane Dunleavy
Upper Darby, Pennsylvania

Leave King Alone

LIKE many readers, I share the Irish Voice’s frustration with Congressman Peter King’s stance on immigration reform. But this does not justify the abusive tone of some of the “Intelligencer” column’s attacks on King’s character.

Simply put, The New York Times opted to put the lives of innocent Americans at risk by disclosing details of intelligence operations. King has every right to call them on the carpet for this.

It is difficult enough to protect our citizens from lunatic terrorists. These killers deserve no help from our nation’s left wing media.

Throughout his public career King has been a strong voice for the underdog. Indeed, for years he was a lonely voice in the U.S. Congress speaking out on behalf of Northern Ireland’s repressed Catholic minority.

Shame, therefore, on the Irish Voice for printing this scurrilous and puerile diatribe.

Tom Mahoney
Buffalo Grove, Illinois

Disappointed in King

I AM still flabbergasted that our great friend in so many battles, Congressman Peter King, has deserted us on immigration reform.

King was always the one who stood up for the unfortunate souls who fled Northern Ireland to come and lived in America. He was our voice when no one else would speak out.

Now I see him on Meet the Press and Hannity and Colmes and can’t believe it is the same politician who had the conscience and integrity to stand up for the Irish when no other politician would.

Now he seems so angry all the time, and from reading the Irish Voice I know he has continuously refused to come out in favor of legalizing the Irish.

I cannot believe he is the man that I have admired for so long. His latest episode where he never turned up for Sinn Fein meetings is just another example of how far Peter has gone in the other direction. I bet he’s even very welcome at the British Embassy these days.

AOH Ignored

YOUR story in last week’s issue of an AOH member’s love child was carried in the same week that the AOH convention packed 1,000 people into a hotel in Boston — yet you never covered a line about that event.

Can I detect an anti AOH bias here?

Seamus O’Brien
Dorchester, Massachusetts

Remembering 1916 Heroes

THERE appears to be a revisionist notion circulating to the effect that if we must insist on commemorating our 1916 Rebellion, we should recognize the Battle of the Somme in a more than equal measure.

The nonsense of that contention is to laud the Irish heroes of Easter Week, while at the same time paying homage to their enemy which was also involved in another war.

If it was only the honor due to the fallen Irish/British of World War I which was the issue, then no clear thinker could argue that point, but it goes much deeper than that with, for example, the anti-Irish columnists in the Sunday Independent, along with the pseudo historians who have sprung up, to give us the obviously jaundiced version of Irish history. Their personal and prejudiced accounts.

Their main plank is to attempt to rubbish the whole of the Irish independence struggle, while giving whole-hearted support to the colonial aspirations of our then super-power neighbor which (along with Germany) wished to dominate all of Europe under the pretext of the “defense of small nations.”

When I stood on a square in 1966 to watch my father and his old comrades parade in remembrance of their struggle on its 50th anniversary, there was no doubt then, as there is none today, as to the legitimacy of their stance in the face of aggression from a ruthless enemy.

As they marched in their overcoats and cloth caps, their campaign medals pinned to their lapels, they seemed an unlikely band in the minds of their children to have been involved in such a desperate war.

That many of them later fought each other in the tragedy which was our Civil War was especially poignant. But they were united again on that day to remember the common cause they had embarked upon all those decades ago.

When their fight was over they settled into family life, often in poverty, yet they didn’t complain. They fought for the freedom of their own small nation, and were satisfied when the state, after great confusion and bitterness, was eventually born.

The Ken Loach film The Wind That Shakes the Barley does some justice to their legacy. that of a stable and semi-prosperous, confident country.

It is often forgotten that the soldiers who took on the might of the British Army were first and foremost civilians, hastily trained to become a fighting force. The ranks of the various columns were made up of farm workers and laborers, unselfish in their sacrifice.

We hear today deafening rhetoric which supports the contention that approval or indeed mere reference to the times our fathers and grandfathers lived through in the defense of the Republic, could be somehow damaging to the Good Friday Agreement.

We ought treat such words with the contempt they deserve. Those who helped form the Ireland of today were not of the generation who made decisions to wage war in more recent times, and most would have been disapproving. “We have government to represent us,” would be their call.

We need not be ashamed to be Irish because there came before our time men and women who fought a just and legitimate war so that we, their descendants, might have freedom in our own land.

We applauded the re-instatement of official commemorations recognizing the 916 Rising. That they were suspended in the first place was an insult.

Robert O’Sullivan
Bantry, Co. Cork
Ireland

Enough of the Bulgers

AM I the only one who thinks this, or is there a complete oversupply of movies and dramas about the Bulger brothers in recent times?

Okay, the story of one brother who became a leading politician and another who became a master criminal is interesting, but is it a good idea to have every two bit producer decide to do yet another Irish American rip-off of the family?

Now I see that Martin Scorsese has gotten in the act, not content with his many movies about Italian gangsters, none of which ever won an Oscar for a good reason.

It seems the Irish mob are the news of the day, but trying to romanticize cold blooded killers like Whitey Bulger leaves me feeling very cold indeed.

Hollywood loves this stuff of course, but Irish Americans should know better than to believe all the blarney about the Irish mob. They are no different than the Italians. They are ruthless hoods and killers who spread drugs, prostitution and ruin lives wherever they strike.

Mario Puzzi introduced the romantic Mafia to all of us with The Godfather. I suggest it is time someone like Frank McCourt or his brother Malachy wrote the anti-Mafia book about what it is really like with the Irish mobs.

James Ryan
Baltimore, Maryland