A time for rationality
McCarthy, Abigail
Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy A TIME FOR RATIONALITY WIDOWS & ORPHANS-MADE IN U.S.A. THE contrast could not have been stronger—rampant emotionalism in the streets below, the essence...
...Hundreds of Iranian students were parading past the National Press Club, yelling their defiance of President Carter and their support for the embassy take-over in Tehran...
...We can make it clear at every opportunity that the accidents of Irish history have made the word "Catholic" and "ProtesJant" badges of difference in the same way that "black...
...One survey showed that 60 percent of the representatives elected in the south had had no contact with the north...
...Go,home...
...It seemed possible that day as we listened to reasonable discourse from a leader convinced of a future beyond terror...
...We can be open to all points of vie w in Ireland...
...And it bears an undue burden—a drag on its new prosperity— in order to maintain security...
...What can we do that is constructive...
...We can foster the future, draw only the good from the past...
...And investment and trade are what Ireland invites from the rest of the world, but particularly from the United States...
...that her problems are social, political, and economic—problems of justice and human rights, not of religion...
...One American gun was used in 19 murders in northern Ireland...
...He is, of course, completely right...
...Those elected representatives here who identify with the people of violence and seek to provide havens for them are on the side, not of Ireland, but of international terrorism which has goals other than a united Ireland...
...Americans must eschew the support of violence...
...It is well known, they say, that guns and money have come from the United States to support the activities of the Provos in 28 March 1980: 167 both the north and the south...
...It would be a step forward if other, less loaded, descriptive terms were used by American commentators—party labels, for example...
...A business or factory settled in Ireland enjoys access to workers with the same language, a government whose attitude is congenial to business, and an open door to a market of 260,000 people...
...Security from terrorism is necessary to provide a climate hospitable for investment...
...On the speaker's platform on the twelfth floor the then Prime Minister of Ireland, '' Jack'' Lynch made his case against violence in the affairs of nations...
...For more than a decade that Ireland has rejected at the polls those who espouse violence...
...Other spokesmen for Ireland are evea more blunt than was the prime minister...
...Even more destructive than the money and guns, he thought, was the political and moral support given the terrorists...
...We can seek means to support political solutions to the divisions and difficulties between north and south and within the north itself...
...THE contrast could not have been stronger—rampant emotionalism in the streets below, the essence of rationality at the lectern within...
...They must acknowledge that the Ireland of the Easter uprising, of the rebellion, of the birth of Eire, the Republic, is, not the Ireland of today...
...We can foster the forging of links betwee.n north and south—cultural links, ecumenical links (there are already some of those), economic links, political links—a common attack on common problems...
...Abigail McCarthy Commonweal: 168...
...80 percent in the north, no contact with the south...
...It is irrational and unworthy of people committed to, and benefiting from the principles of democracy and representative government...
...They carry far less emotional freight and evoke less emotional (and unfounded) identification...
...Angered Americans behind the police lines booed, shook their fists, and shouted "Go home...
...And it offers new industry what most of Europe lacks—a large and young labor force...
...Noraid (the euphemistic title of the organization said to supply the IRA) is creating Irish widows and orphans...
...Too many American Irish are out of touch with the new Ireland...
...We can support a role for the government of the Republic that goes beyond the providing of security...
...Who knows—perhaps once again the men and women will go out from Ireland, as they did in the early centuries, to instruct a shattered world—rational people from a peaceful land...
...If this takes some of the sheen and the sentiment off our celebrations, so be it...
...But with the slacking of Irish immigration into the United States, the umbilical cord between our two countries has been cut—so one Irishman put it—and an information gap has developed...
...It has refused a base to terrorists...
...people involved in terrorism have been given a moral and psychological base here...
...Prime Minister Lynch put it plainly: those Americans who sympathize with, and, worse, support the Provisional IRA with money and weapons are harming the country they mean to help...
...It is one of the greatest sources of food for Europe...
...it rests on a mindless, uninformed looking back...
...Because of this new industry, new markets, and new products and the jobs thus provided, Ireland has been able to stem the constant outflow of emigration which, for more than a century and a half, robbed the country of her youth...
...Now, in March, over four months later, when the old songs are sung, old battles refought, old hatreds and rivalries revived in the memories of the American Irish, it seems a good time to give serious thought to the message carried to us three months ago by the Prime Minister...
...Gone is the poor, distressful Mother Country of the American Irish, and in her place is an independent modern state economically tied to Europe—a state which owes more to the practical dream of Jean Monnet than that of Cathleen ni Houlihan...
...Since Ireland became part of the Common Market, the advantages of investment there are many...
...white," "Anglo," and "Chicano" or "Hispanic" are here...
...Its source is in good will based on ignorance...
...There are no if's and but's about it," said one man from the Republic in vigorous protest...
...This Ireland has the best annual economic growth in the European economic community...
...Lynch had come to talk of a new and affluent Ireland, an Ireland which has sternly rejected violence and terrorism...
Vol. 107 • March 1980 • No. 6
