Sir, - I am an occasional reader of John Waters's weekly column, because I have a theory that, just as physical exertion is good for the body, so the experience of suppressing one's anger and encountering opinions in almost exact contradiction with one's own might be good for the temperament. Frequently I am incited to write in response, but so far have always recovered.
However, after reading his latest contribution (Opinion, August 24th) on the subject of patriotism and the bomb in Omagh, I have cracked. Mr Waters seems to have come close to sensing the contradictions in what he writes, but rather than face them, he has chosen to close his eyes, put his hands over his ears, and start reciting a mantra - in this case the 1916 Proclamation. It is disturbing to see a man's reason struggle with his beliefs and lose.
Mr Waters claims the bombers have sullied his ideals, but he does not try to deny their patriotism. He cannot. Just as they are patriots, so are their loyalist counterparts, so were the British troops who killed hundreds at Amritsar in 1919, the American soldiers who poured napalm over villages in Vietnam, and the Germans who massacred millions in the second World War. Mr Waters claims that patriotism "at its best . . unites us in fellow-feeling with other peoples who love their own nations", but such a thing has never happened, and never will. The only time we ever hear about patriots is when there is a war going on. In peacetime their ideas are irrelevant.
Mr Waters claims to love his countrymen. Does that extend to those who carried out this atrocity, and to all those who have previously killed and maimed in the name of Ireland? Should our national pride include all these acts? To say yes is nonsense. We choose our friends and enemies on the grounds of their humanity, or lack of it. Nationhood and patriotism have nothing to do with it. In small doses, a sense of nationhood enables us to live together and cooperate all over the world. In large doses it is lethal.
But for Mr Waters, the message of Omagh is that he should reaffirm his old beliefs, absorb the guilt, and pray harder. How depressing. - Yours, etc.,
Aylwyn Scally,
Darwin College,
Cambridge,
England.