KEVIN HOWARD,
Sir, - Commenting on the underlying rationale behind the ongoing sectarian violence by Protestant paramilitaries, Stephen King states baldly:
"It is a cultural fact that Protestants are virtually immune to leadership. The IRA, working with the grain of Catholic obedience, finds it comparatively easy to switch on and off rioting and its other provocation."
Where is the evidence for this? Lutheran Sweden or Catholic Corsica, perhaps? The cultural fact is that King's "analysis" is little more than an recycling of the old, "WASP", self-serving mythology of Protestants as the rugged individuals of the frontier, the tamers of the wilderness, deeply suspicious of authority - in short "the natural leaders of men".
In this view Catholics are conditioned to docile obedience, they are followers not leaders, and the natural order is subverted when they demand an equality for which nature has not equipped them. - Yours, etc.,
KEVIN HOWARD,
The Maltings,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.