From: spain@galvia.enet.dec.com ()
Subject: Re: Nationalism - or Why do people have flags in their gardens?
Reply-To: spain@galvia.enet.dec.com ()
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 20:19:52 GMT

--
In article <1992Oct2.222932.15373@news.nd.edu>, ulick@gershwin.helios.nd.edu 
|>>Considering that the raison d'etre of the Orange Order is sectarian, I 
|>>sincerely doubt Gary's assertion that southern Orangemen don't sing sectarian
|>>songs. I wonder if Gary's ever read the charter of the Orange Order? It exists
|>>solely to re-establish a protestant hegemony over "papists". It is a purely
|>>sectarian organization (don't believe me? try joining). For someone who has 
|>>repeatedly pilloried the GAA as being sectarian, it surprises me to hear
|>>Gary Spain portray Orangemen as some sort of benevolent cultural group.
|>
|>Really?  Anyone who has read this group for a while would hardly be surprised.
|>Gary attempts to hide his anglophilic side by having a seemingly unnatural
|>hatred for the English International soccer team, which of course, he insists
|>on calling Football with a rather venomous zeal.  He has a not unusual Irish 
|>attitude, I'm afraid.  If it's Irish it's crap, but now the British and
|>Northern Unionist people are superior alltogether.  I have encountered this
|>attitude in Ireland among my relatives, friends, etc., and may have had it
|>myself at one time.  Why must we always put ourselves down?

Here we go again.

First of all, Soccer is a slang term for football.  Soccer is used in the 
United States and Australia but football or a variation is used virtually everywhere else in the world by football fans.  In Ireland the game is
administered by the FOOTBALL Association of Ireland.  I generally refer to
the game as football as do most football fans.  

I do not consider Ireland or things Irish to be crap.  Just because I despise
a terrorist organisation that is responsible for numerous deaths in Northern
Ireland and further afield that does not make me anti Irish.  While I've
never met your friends and relatives I doubt if they are all anti Irish either.
98.4% of our electorate chose not to vote for Sinn Fein in the last
general election.  That does not make us English or anti Irish.

As for my hatred of the English football team being unnatural, well it's
shared with just about every other football fan in these islands outside of
England.  Try watching an England game in a Scotland pub.  One NI fan
whom I presume was an arsdent unionist commented that the only time he ever
wants us to win is when we play England.  The recent success of our national
football team has been particularly difficult for the narrow minded bigots
to take.  Those who protray Sockur/Britball as a foreign game and all fans of it as English have had to endure an Irish side doing well and has buried the myth
that we're all Brits at heart.

What was warranted these latest personal attacks?  

Sorry Ulick, I'm Irish and proud of it.  I may not support the IRA and I
may not like the sectarian policies of the GAA but that doesn't make me any
less Irish.


       Gary Spain, DEC, Galway, Ireland   - spain@galvia.enet.dec.com

  On being a football fan: "I am aware of the downside to this wonderful 
  facility that men have: they become repressed, they fail in their 
  relationships with women,their conversation is trivial and boorish, they 
  find themselves unable to express their emotional needs, they cannot relate
  to their children, and die lonely and miserable. But you know, what the hell?"
								   Nick Hornby