Madam, - In an interview with Susan McKay (Features, March 21st) about his his new play Talking With Terrorists, the playwright and actor Robin Soans asserts that "We are all potential terrorists". I certainly hope not.
Mr Soans explains this statement by recalling the sacking of Jenny Tonge, MP, from the Liberal Democrat front bench in 2004. Ms Tonge had said that if she lived in Palestine, she might become a suicide bomber. Mr Soans agreed with her and describes her removal as "the most disappointing event in recent British political history".
"The thwarting of aspirations in a domestic setting spawns violence", he says. Really? I'm sure many of your readers, like me, find their aspirations thwarted on an almost daily basis here in Ireland.
Aspirations to get to work on time are thwarted by an inadequate transport infrastructure. Aspirations to purchase a house are thwarted by rocketing house prices. Aspirations to win the lottery are thwarted by our numbers not coming up. This does not mean we strap gelignite to ourselves and walk into the nearest shopping centre. It means that if we wish to effect a change in our personal circumstances, we work toward doing so, and if we wish for political or social change then we engage in the democratic process by exercising our vote. What we certainly should not do, as rational human beings, is inflict suffering and misery on others because the world won't listen to what we have to say.
Mr Soans uses the example of Thomas Hamilton, responsible for the Dunblane massacre, as someone who felt ignored because "he had put in 148 applications to the local council for various schemes. In the end he just explodes".
I am aware that moral relativism is the cornerstone of contemporary left-wing dialectics, but surely this is going too far. Thomas Hamilton was a self-obsessed psychopath whose murder of 16 children could never be justified or explained as anything other than an act of pure evil - no matter how annoyed he got with his local council.
The same goes for the Islamic fundamentalists responsible for the indiscriminate slaughter of Iraqi civilians, but whose crimes are excused by some as a legitimate response to a foreign occupation. Or indeed any of the hundreds of murder gangs who have used nationalism, separatism or the politics of left or right since the dawn of the 20th century to exculpate their actions.
Meaningful democracy needs dissent if it is to flourish. Poets, it has been said, are the unacknowledged legislators of our age. But artists, writers and broadcasters who would fulfil this vital function must be careful that in the rush to understand they do not give shelter to those who hate us, sapping our resolve to defend our civilisation and leaving yet more innocent victims to the bombers and beheaders. - Yours, etc,
PHILIP DONNELLY, Lower Hodgestown, Donadea, Naas, Co Kildare.