LETTERS SHOULD BE SENT TO:

Irish Voice/Letters to the Editor
875 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 2100, NY, NY 10001
Fax: (212) 244-3344 • E-mail: letters@irishvoice.com

Irish Liberals Are Sad

LAST week’s “Intelligencer” article about President George W. Bush’s approval ratings in Ireland presented a very superficial analysis of why Bush rates so poorly in Ireland.

Like the liberal mainstream media and academia do, the author attributed the poor image primarily to the war in Iraq. However, if there was no war in Iraq it would make no difference.

The war is only a convenient means used by the left to dehumanize and vilify Bush. The real question is — what is it that drives this hatred of Bush?

The liberal mainstream media, academia and politicians here and in Ireland define Bush as unenlightened and anti-progressive. To be considered enlightened you must support wholeheartedly what has become for them the sacraments of their Godless philosophy of life.

Anyone who opposes these evil sacraments — abortion, partial birth abortion, homosexual marriage, teenage abortion without parental consent, killing of fetuses for stem cells, and euthanasia — will bring down upon himself the full fury and hatred that was reserved only for religious bigots. Bush as an opponent of these evil sacraments is in the bull’s eye of this fury.

The left wing Irish academic community and media validate themselves in these beliefs by worshipping at the feet of Noam Chomsky, the atheist, communist, hate-America professor at MIT in Boston. He is their darling and is invited continually to Ireland to enlighten them in his Godless philosophy and the evils of Bush.

Chomsky himself was validated at the UN last week by none other than the Caracas communist crackpot of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, as he encouraged everyone to read Chomsky.

It is so sad to see the greater population in Ireland being duped by these lefties who are able to create and maintain a dominant image of Bush as the sole evil we face in the world. The liberal media repeat the lie and it becomes the truth.

Rather than turn to the Chomskyites of the world, the Irish media and academics should reflect on their 2,000 years of glorious Christian heritage and read Mathew 16,verse 18:

“Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

John Rogers
Voorhees, New Jersey

Don’t Use Deaths

I WOULD like to comment on John Rogers’ letter “An Inconvenient Truth” in the September 13-19 issue. He says Americans like it straight from the shoulder, so here goes.

President Bush has ignored the U.S. Constitution and sent the U.S. Army to fight and die for an Islamic Constitution. He has committed U.S. troops to a religious war where no matter who wins, they lose.

To paraphrase Barry Goldwater, loyalty to a president who should be impeached is no virtue. Refusing to support a war that is foolish and unconstitutional is no vice.

A few inconvenient truths for you, Mr. Rogers – Ireland had troops in the Middle East as peacekeepers long before Bush I and Bush II launched their crusades that have killed 100,000 Muslims. The Irish government has supported the U.S. Army by giving Shannon as an air base at great danger to their own people.

The Irish have great experience with a foreign nation and religion forcing their brand of civilization on them. Perhaps instinctively they realize the cost.

Finally, Mr. Rogers, stop using the dead for your agenda. It’s sickening.

Robert A. Schauder
Flushing, New York

Spain Kids’ Bad Dad

SO John Spain wants to withdraw Irish from the school curriculum, just because his kids don’t like it and don’t use it? Why not do away with all the subjects also never used or liked?

History for one! No one has ever learned from it. Neither past glorious emperors, nor present presidents.

Geography! When is the last time the Spain family sat at the dinner table and discussed the topography of the Wicklow Mountains?

Chemistry! Do the Spain kids hide in their garage to experiment with new chemical mixtures?

So Spain is right. Let’s just shrink the school curriculum to computer science, the only thing they will ever need to use, for it can do everything else for them. How ridiculous is that reasoning?

Now about Irish. Would Spain rather have his kids be taught Polish or Lithuanian (since he happily claims they are more widely spoken?) How much more useful than Irish would that be for them in life?

The one point where I agree with Spain is the government’s cowardice and hypocrisy in its promotion of the Irish language.

But unlike Spain, instead of abolishing an active language, I would want the government to be a lot more aggressive in its revival of the language.

All public signs, all business contracts or anything should be in Irish first (and then English, or other languages.) And for sure, no foreign kid should be exempt. On the contrary, all immigrants, adult and child, with a desire for permanent residency should be made to learn basic conversational Irish within one year.

But all that bashing of the Irish language is not surprising from a man known for his despise of nearly all things Irish. A man who spits venom onto anything deeply Irish, from the Republican movement in the North, the Catholic Church in the south and now his own country’s language. How could his kids dare like the language?

Maybe it’s time for Spain to give up his Irish passport, on which it reads “An tAontas Eorpach, Eire and Pas,” and move to London, where the number one language is English – or is it Pakistani?

Sean Neyret
Fort Lee, New Jersey

Junk Justice

THE tiger is roaring, but apparently the law of the land is still in a deep slumber.

The judicial courts of Ireland need to wake up and take giant leaps into the present and face the stark reality of the times. A more modern view is screaming for attention on how to come to grips with the escalating crime wave that is sadly plunging into the very heart of Irish society on a daily level.

I am both shocked and appalled at the leniency given to those who commit serious crimes in Ireland today. I cannot for the life of me even begin to imagine the mindset of any sitting judge who would set an obvious serious crime offender free on such measly bail requests.

A country is only as free as its laws allows it to be and clearly, Ireland is in the stranglehold of “traditional pity,” and it’s laws seem to be the laughing stock of it’s criminal element.

Serious crime merits serious attention, and the sentencing of serious offenders should not be taken so lightly. For generations Ireland suffered from the plight of poverty and lack of opportunity for its children.

I was one of those children and I had to leave Ireland, as did many more just like me, but always we have held our homeland deep in our hearts and we are forever proud to claim our Irishness to the world.

A modern and prosperous Ireland has been a God blessing, but for any who believe that the tiger came to Ireland simply out of the giving hand of good fortune, they are greatly undermining the amount of prayers, hopes, dreams and devotion to achievement that made Ireland in the first place a very attractive denizen for tigers to re-locate to.

Don’t let financial prosperity erase quality of life, and even though we have come from such measly beginnings, we have also derived from a way of life, that was once the envy of the world over.

Pat Greene
Brooklyn, New York