Sir, – As someone who has found the subservient, non-critical attitude of many of my fellow country men and women deeply disheartening for as many years as I could myself hold critical faculties, Fintan O’Toole’s piece, “Ah it could be worse – we could be Greece” (Opinion, April 17th) was a piece of profoundly apt poetry.
This “wheedling peasant mentality” as he succinctly refers to it, may be on the one hand, a singular national trait but – once you don’t share it – deeply infuriating when constantly encountered. I mean, look at what is being heaped upon submissive Irish taxpayers as a result of a European economic policy of austerity which economist Paul Krugman correctly labels “economic suicide” (Business supplement, April 17th). More levies (excusing the crude pun) than the Southern Mississippi; household levies, water levies, levies for using the toilet, levies for breathing the air above our 360 degree coastline. Okay, I made the last two up but watch this space . . .
While I’m not for one minute lauding fruitless grousing I do, personally, find what the Spanish refer to as “cojones” coupled with a questioning, slightly rebellious mien a far more admirable national character than this rather childish, passive disconnection from reality.
We need to adopt a mature, collective responsibility for our own national destiny or else continue, in coming decades, to plough along the same barren furrow which brought us our current miserable harvest. – Yours, etc,