Madam, - In his comments on Martin Mansergh's comparison of Ireland's celebration of 1916 with the French celebration of Bastille Day (March 15th), Pat Ryan implies that 1916 led to a closed society and a deprivation of human rights, especially those of women.
His is a skewed perspective on history if he sees Bastille Day as leading from tyranny, statism and a closed society to liberalism, human rights, and an open society.
The major prophet of the revolution was Rousseau, whose Social Contract was nothing other than an assertion of state absolutism. Frightening horrors befell France in the following decade. Their logical conclusion, so astutely foreseen by Irishman Edmund Burke, was the tyranny of Napoleon.
For more than a century and a half afterwards, France endured political instability, turmoil, and absolutism, while a feminist agenda was scarcely served.
In spite of 1916 and the War of Independence, the Irish did not apply a revolutionary blueprint, but instead adapted existing constitutional and democratic institutions.
Ireland's adherence to those institutions was almost unique among newly independent nations in the 20th century. That achievement was because its early leaders were, as one of them said, "the most conservative of revolutionaries". - Yours, etc,
JOHN P. McCARTHY, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus Fordham University, New York.