Irish Independant

Sunday March 30 2008

Sir -- Congratulations to Alan Ruddock (March 23) on his nail-on-the-
head article pointing up the failure of the Left to mobilise against
political corruption and systematic maladministration in entire areas
of governance. I marched in Dublin against the invasion of Iraq; I am
astounded that the Left has not mobilised against social crimes
closer to home, as they most certainly would have in other European
countries. Or is Left in Ireland simply Right spelled differently?
The fallout from Fianna Fail's refusal to dump Bertie Ahern, as
Ruddock sees it, "will not be confined to some academic notion of
Irish political morality because it cannot be disconnected from
everything else that is touched by our politics."
Now this is a very important statement; Irish culture is also touched
by politics, a fact that may account to some degree for the deafening
and shaming silence from our writers on events unfolding at the Mahon
Tribunal, the parlous state of our health services, and so on.
Aosdana has swallowed Left-leaning writers whole, declaring itself
non-political.
The rattling in print of some of their members over the O Searcaigh
affair (when, using typical Fianna Fail defence-speak, they tried to
find a form of words to dissolve the seriousness of what was
revealed) served only to indicate the closed and self-deluding nature
of an academy so deeply dependent on the State.
Broadcast an RTE arts' show and there they are, our artists,
preening, pontificating, saying nothing with lots of words. It is
left to a young girl demonstrating at the sacred site of Tara to show
us what backbone is. And let no one for a moment think that the world
of Irish culture is whiter-then-white, morally or ethically; it is,
for the greater part, an industry, with the grubby ambition,
treachery and moral hypocrisy of an industry.
With no lead possible from our cultural guardians, less from our
politicians, the Left as we know it in melt-down and the Catholic
Church discredited, how can we be so morally amazed when Irish
children take to the streets, drunk, drugged up, violent, seeking an
innocent enemy?

Fred Johnston,
Circular Road, Galway

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/time-to-stand-up-
1332250.html


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