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the editors to [email protected].
(posted Thursday, Jan.
30)
Fightin'
Irish?
I have to take issue with
Franklin Foer's piece "Pataki and Potatoes."
I agree with his criticism
of the New York law mandating the teaching of the famine as a historical
example of genocide. As a sometime teacher, I see this sort of legislation as
the worst kind of politically-motivated government meddling in education. It is
also clear that the motivation behind such legislation is a reaction to
"multiculturalism" and the history of European brutality toward non-Christian,
non-European peoples. The resulting tit-for-tat is perhaps the best possible
argument for refraining from even well-intentioned political efforts to shape
the public-school curriculum. I object, however, to Foer's characterization of
both the famine and the current vogue of Irish-American identification with
Irish history and culture. His understanding of the famine and the British
government's role in it--at least as demonstrated in this piece--is shallow, at
best.
British economic policy
aggravated a desperate situation. That Irish grain should have been exported
while Irish people starved--for little other purpose but to hold down the price
of grain on the English market--was as morally repugnant to contemporary
observers as it is to modern ones. Many contemporary English observers
advocated intervention to thwart the famine. Their voices went unheeded by the
likes of Peel, Russell, and Trevelyan, and the ideology of laissez-faire
political economy meshed with anti-Irish bigotry to produce catastrophic
results for the Irish poor.
Unfortunately, Foer's
apparent ignorance of Irish history goes deeper still. The English government
was responsible for the underlying conditions of the Irish agricultural economy
that made the Irish poor so vulnerable to the blight. The dispossession of
Irish Catholic farmers, which took place in successive waves over several
centuries, relegated them to the most marginally cultivable pieces of land. A
cash-crop market system supplanted the traditional locally based subsistence
economy, and placed Irish farmers in a position of dependence on a single crop.
When that crop failed several years in succession, they had no viable
alternative to starvation or (if they could afford it) emigration.
English-imposed legal disabilities also hobbled the efforts of poor Irish
Catholics to redress ill-treatment by Anglo-Irish landowners and merchants.
Furthermore, Foer makes no mention of the deliberate withholding of corn from
the Irish market to prop up prices for corn producers in England.
As Foer points out, other
areas of Europe experienced blights of the potato crop from the same fungus,
but none suffered the human devastation that Ireland did. The historic policies
of the English crown, and later, the British government, turned a crop failure
into one of modern history's most tragic episodes. To argue, as Foer does--that
the notion that the British government bears a substantial measure of
responsibility for the humanitarian crisis of the famine is merely an Irish
"folk tradition"--is as absurd as arguing that the blight itself was introduced
deliberately in a genocidal conspiracy.
As for
Foer's criticism of Irish-American identification with Irish culture as part of
a so-called "Diaspora chic," he is unfair to those Americans of Irish descent
who do not romanticize terrorism, support Sinn Fein or the IRA, join
organizations like the Ancient Order of Hibernians, or celebrate St. Patrick's
day by getting obnoxiously drunk and excluding Irish-Americans who happen to be
gay. That there are Irish-Americans who do these things in no way devalues the
efforts of others to connect with their past. If Irish-Americans tend to have a
superficial understanding of their own history, and to focus on the positive
aspects of their culture to the exclusion of less admirable parts, this only
proves that they are human, and as prone to historical myopia as Anglophiles or
Afrocentrists. As an Irish-American who is unapologetically proud of both parts
of my hyphenated identity, I find Foer's piece less offensive than tendentious
and historically ill-informed.
--Dan
Gorman
Feeding
Hunger
The article "Can We Really Feed
the World?" only scratches the surface of this issue by focusing on the
murky areas of politics, raw power, and corruption.
A more in-depth view would
recognize that when the basic framework of a society disintegrates, external
food supplies may just lead to additional reproduction, and thus more
widespread starvation. Desperate people who have lost all hope for themselves
are biologically driven to propel possibly surviving offspring into the next
generation.
This in turn is just one of
the issues posed by the relationships between technologically advanced
societies (TAS) and technologically primitive societies (TPS). Should "we" (who
is "we"?) let nature run its course and let TAS groups eradicate the TPS
culture or the people themselves? Or should the TAS groups take it upon
themselves to "elevate" the TPS to their level? Or should the TAS build and
patrol walls around the TPS to keep adventurers and entrepreneurs from preying
on the TPS? Should the TAS withhold medical technology from the TPS to preserve
their balanced ecosystem?
Clearly I
have no answers, but a suggestion: Look at the global picture and step down
from ideological and judgmental postures onto the plane of common sense and
compassion.
--Paul
Kailor
Buns of
Steel
As Low
Concept as "Rumble in Hollywood" may be, I take issue with David Plotz's
choice of ballet dancer Baryshnikov to unfavorably compare Jean-Claude Van
Damme with Steven Seagal. Now nearly 50, Baryshnikov may no longer make a
career of jumping higher than Seagal's grasping hands might reach, but he is
still dancing professionally. Which means, just like our grunting action
heroes, the mighty Misha still has buns of steel.
--Kathleen
Morris
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