RIPA

[Owen Lewis]

----- Original Message -----
From: "alastair" <alastair@calliope.demon.co.uk>
To: <ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Sent: 28 February 2001 22:35
Subject: Re: RIPA


> On Wed, Feb 28, 2001 at 01:16:36PM -0000, Owen Lewis wrote:
> >
> > Well I suppose it can be said for Geraghty that selling his story is a
more
> > gainful employment than probably the only other alternative open to him,
> > i.e. dossing on the Embankment.
>
> Owen,
>
> I have to say that the comment you made above has greatly diminished the
> respect you have gained from me, gained from many impeccably reasoned
> previous posts you have made. The least you could do is 'read the
> twaddle' (as you so eloquently put it).

Ah well, easy come, easy go. But consider at least the following. It may be
necessary to read a book to offer an effective deconstruction of the same
but it is not always necessary to do to conclude that its author's marbles
are one short of a full box. I have read Mein Kampf (in translation) though
most have not. Should one claim, therefore, that those who have not read the
seminal work of Herr Hitler should not condemn the man as having been, shall
we say, of decidedly odd opinions and delicately balanced on his trolley? Or
even to describe him as a soldier of no great distinction and a failed
artist,  who would have starved in the gutters of Vienna had he not made a
living peddling his strange views to a willing and credulous audience?

My somewhat light hearted comment about Mr Geraghty (does he warrant more?)
was based on the facts, evinced here, that:

    1. His writing has seriously mislead at least one intelligent and
educated reader, not in one but in several particulars, as to what military
tactics may have been feasible in NI and therefore could ever have been
discussed as options at some point. In itself, that offers the document for
labelling as twaddle. That the author of it was, apparently, once a soldier
is indicative that this misleading should not be mitigated by any plea of
ignorance. Rather, it bespeaks of motivation.

    2. For a "scholarly" and unbiased historical work, his selected
startpoint of the final ascendancy of Protestantism in English politics is
somewhat blinkered. The involvement of Protestantism in the history of
English and Irish conflict is over  one hundred years older than his opening
and the history of that conflict is even some four hundred years older than
that earlier point. Also, no study of conflict in Ireland is complete, let
alone definitive, without explanation of events leading to the grant of
Ireland to the Angevin crown, upon the marriage of Eleanor to the Norman,
Henry II. It is not the common knowledge it should be among those who
pontificate on the history of Anglo-Irish affairs that Ireland was granted
England and not taken by conquest. There may have been a scholarly study of
the period of Irish history from about 800 to 1142 but, if there is such, I
have not had the good fortune to read it. Though the history of continual
conflict in Ireland certainly predates the year 800, that approximate time
is the watershed (death of Brian Boru in 823?) that marked the divergence of
the theretofore similar roads of England and Ireland, England towards
statehood and Ireland to something else for another 1200 years. To start a
study of Anglo-Irish conflict with William III's campaign is about as
sensible and balanced as to start a study of Franco-German conflict with the
30 Years War. It is not without significance that a study of that latter
conflict would also find its roots shortly after 800. If one puts
Anglo-Irish affairs into a rightful European context, cultural, religious,
philosophical, political and social, they might come to be looked at
differently, to be viewed with a truer perspective. But then it is attitude
and novelty that sell, rather than balance and truth .

Enough already. You are entitled to your views. I see no reason to change
mine.  Perhaps neither belongs here.

Owen


Home , the heretofore similar struggle of the peoples of England and
Irelandclicy AFAIK, there has been no proper studWilliam's campaign is
perhaps noteworthy only as the last in which the Irish of limited use of
Protestant and Catholic labels
>
> Best Wishes,
>
> --
> Alastair                            |
> alastair@calliope.demon.co.uk       |
> http://www.calliope.demon.co.uk     |            PGP Key : A9DE69F8
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>