Madam, - The arrogant tone of Kathy Sheridan in her column of September 18th cannot go unchallenged.
She scorns opponents of the proposed smoking ban as idiots tilting at the windmills of political correctness, "that scourge of guys who just wanna walk on the wild side and call people niggers and knackers". The implication is that people who believe the ban to be an intolerant and unjustified intrusion by the State into their lives are nothing more than a lunatic fringe of closet racists, to be pitied and then ignored.
I left Ireland to work in the UK two years ago. Each time I return home I am struck by the extent to which the secular cult of political correctness has infiltrated Irish public life and seized the moral high ground for itself, evicting in the process all those who disagree.
When one samples Irish newspapers, radio or television in search of news, one is subjected to an institutionalised bias so blatant that a Martian landing his spaceships in contemporary Ireland could be forgiven the assumption he had arrived in 1930s Soviet Russia.
The catechism of this new religion seldom varies.
The State at all times knows what is best for the citizen, and should order every aspect of his life accordingly, his irrational attachment to personal freedom being but a symptom of his innate stupidity.
America and Israel are vicious warmongers whose every setback is celebrated and whose demise is fervently prayed for. Unlimited immigration into "multicultural" Ireland is a very good thing; anyone who objects is a foaming xenophobe.
Love for one's country is old hat and the European superstate is not to be questioned; those who vote against it are asked to vote again. Prison sentences are too long and criminals misunderstood; theft is a legitimate tactic of class warfare. The welfare state is an earthly utopia, the free market is hell.
Travellers are victims. The gardaí are villains. Homosexuality is admirable. Chastity is laughable.
Abortion is good. Fox hunting is bad. Vegetarianism is good. Smoking is evil.
These truths are seemingly self-evident; on the rare occasion when someone is foolish enough to publicly deny such a truth, he might well announce the earth is flat or the moon made of cheese. If he persists, the witch-finders of the Left stir themselves and the unbeliever is hounded until he recants or is exiled from the airwaves forever.
In all of this the Catholic Church is especially detested, offering as it does the only real alternative to the posturing nihilism of the Left.
I believe this is the kind of political correctness Martin Cullen had in mind when he timidly protested against the smoking ban.
The Ireland of my parents' youth, the 1950s, is commonly imagined to have been an open-air gulag policed by a monstrous regiment of killjoy priests. As a teenager in Ireland in the 1990s it dawned on me that the Irish still live in a theocracy, only with new masters. These modern mullahs eschew the bell, book, and candle and exorcise instead with the laptop. Through the media they have refashioned Ireland into a dreary place of conformity and self-censorship.
In this context the smoking ban can be understood. Relentlessly badgered by obsessive lobby groups, the current Government has become so unhinged from everyday reality that it introduces demented laws like this one.
I shall not be returning to Ireland next year, or any other, if this ban proceeds. Though I don't smoke, my girlfriend does and the idea of her having to stand in the rain to enjoy a cigarette is frankly obnoxious. By spending my holidays, and money, in a civilised country such as France or Spain, I shall also avoid the tedious brainwashing that now passes for public debate in Ireland, not to mention fairytales about passive smoking and the evil machinations of Big Tobacco. - Yours, etc.,
HENRY McCARTHY, Crowland Road, Luton, England.