Sir, - I see that my old chum Kevin Myers is at it again, refusing to allow the truth stand in the way of a good story, or in his case, frustrate the airing of his warped and jaundiced views.
To saddle Patrick Pearse with the sole responsibility for the destruction of the centre of Dublin in 1916 is simply to ignore the facts. For example, I would have thought that the gunship Helga played some part in that particular devastation. Also to credit Patrick Pearse with the creation of a "diseased and enduring culture of murderous conspiracy and blood sacrifice" seems to me to be a notion that is strong in hyperbole yet curiously weak in historical analysis.
The physical force tradition in Irish politics is indeed an enduring one but I'm afraid it predates Patrick Pearse by many centuries and owes its very existence to the Irish colonial experience. Hopefully, a successful implementation of the present peace process might spell the end of this "enduring" tradition.
Myers argues that "no true republican would have shown so little regard for democracy or for the lives of the plain people of Dublin that he did in embarking upon the murderous recklessness of 1916". Well, again the facts would appear to contradict the view, expressed, may I say, in an unnecessarily provocative vituperative manner. The surrender by the volunteers ordered by Pearse in order to prevent the further slaughter of Dublin citizens is surely not "an act of murderous recklessness".
Again and again in the course of his article Kevin Myers insists that Patrick Pearse "was a fanatic, who knew nothing about democracy and cared even less about it". Yet, once more, the facts counter such hostile views.
The Sovereign People which was written by Pearse, just before 1916, argues in favour of "the widest possible franchise - give a vote to every adult man and woman of sound mind. To resist the franchise in any respect is to prepare the way for some future usurpation of the rights of the sovereign people. The people, that is, the whole people, must remain sovereign not only in theory, but in fact." Not the words of someone opposed to democracy and it must be said that in terms of democracy, at the time, these views were very progressive indeed. The existing franchise was limited to about half the male population. The poorer half of men and all women did not have the vote.
Finally, I want to assure Kevin Myers that there is no such thing as the Pearse cult. In fact the organisation behind the restoration of the Pearse family home, namely the Ireland Institute, did so because it believed that any so-called civilised society should maintain such historic buildings for public benefit and it also believed that to allow 27 Pearse Street to fall foul of developers' blight would have been a national disgrace. - Yours, etc.,
Robert Ballagh, Dublin 7.