The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Panic City

9.23.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 5 of 5)

Of course, there will always be those who will tell us that accessing the body parts of others when they were sixteen or thereabouts were some of the more wonderful moments in their lives. How can something that turned out to be good be wrong?

The answer is that there is a kind of evil which is not truly wicked in itself. Evil often is the illicit use of something intended for good. Sex in itself is meant for good. It is its wrongful use that does harm to one's spirit. So it is not surprising that something good would come out of adolescent sex. What would truly be surprising would be if nothing good came out of it.

The tragedy is we have lost the language in our culture to seriously speak to one another about hazards to a teenager's spirit -- hazards to anyone's spirit for that matter. The Germans have an expression called "unhealthy health." What it refers to is the phenomenon of gravely ill persons suddenly appearing to have an upturn in their wellbeing only to die afterward. Handing out condoms to teenagers may appear to be a positive, proactive solution; but it really is a sign of death.

For all its worth, that's my two cents.
-- Mike Dooley

FINDING SCOTLAND
Re: Hal G.P. Colebatch's (very old) Losing Scotland:

The article "Losing Scotland" went on and on about Scottish people being anti-English with not the slightest acknowledgement of the dreadful anti-Scottish abuse that is conducted in English" newspapers and magazines and on the Internet. Every week, some clown is proclaiming in mainstream print that "the Scots" are a nation of racists and/or parasites supported by the English taxpayer. No respectable Scottish publication would allow the English to be insulted in this way on their pages.

When I lived in London, I was on the receiving end of racist insults and, on two occasions, racist violence. Many Scots have experienced this. The last two occasions that the Scotland team visited to play England, our national anthem was drowned out by booing and the Scotland fans showered with bottles by England fans chanting, "I'd rather be a Pakki than a Jock!" Many English people celebrate in delight when the Scotland team lose. I am not suggesting that the racism is all one side -- I will leave that kind of partisanship to Hal G. P. Colebatch.

One thing in this article is a downright lie: there is prejudice and bad feeling on both sides of the Border but there is certainly no "anti-English obsession" in Scotland. This pernicious nonsense is based on the swollen-headed, self-important notion of England's idiot minority that Scotland is such a boring little place that the natives have nothing else to do except be "obsessed" with their wonderful, fascinating English neighbours. This horribly patronising and self-glorifying attitude does nothing but harm to Anglo-Scottish relations. Think about it: how would you like to share a house with a guy who keeps babbling on about how "obsessed" you are with him and how he is the centre of your otherwise barren little existence? How much of that do you think you could stand before you moved out in disgust?

Apart from anything else, Scotland's bigots expend most of their energy on sectarian hatemongering. Both Catholic and Protestant make up vile poems and songs about one another. A recent sickening example can be found here: Sing it to the tune, "The Sloop John B." if you have the stomach for it.

There is a stinking great mountain of anti-Catholic/Irish songs like that and an equal amount of anti-Protestant stuff from the other side. And yet...there are no anti-English songs or poems for the simple reason that even Scotland's most pathetically small-minded bigots do not find the good people of Hetton-le-Hole, Weston Supermare or Leighton Buzzard important enough or interesting enough to devote much time to them. Nevertheless, many English people, quite unaware of Scotland's bitter sectarian divide, preeningly imagine that every Scottish nose is pressed up against the window-pane "obsessively" hating and envying their English "betters." I guess anything that makes life in Leighton Buzzard a bit more bearable...

The next time The American Spectator reports on the Anglo-Scottish divide, how about a bit more open-minded spectating and less lazy assumptions that merely reflect English prejudices.
-- Rob Johnston
Deepest, darkest Scotchland
P.S. I sincerely hope that Colebatch's relatives who supposedly fled Scotland and moved to England in disgust at the "anti-English obsession" do not experience the kind of anti-Scottish racism that I experienced (from an idiot minority, not from most people) when I lived in London. I was abused, twice assaulted, and I found myself referred to by the nauseating appellation, "sweatie" -- the usual English derogatory term for Scottish people. If Colebatch's relatives get the treatment that I got, I wonder where they will go scampering off to next? Are they looking for a country where the entire population effortlessly above ethnic prejudice? They will certainly not find that in England, any more than they found it in Scotland.

We Scots do not claim to be superior to the English; we are simply sick and tired of being depicted as inferior to them in character. Take this garbage about an "anti-English obsession." This is the exact equivalent of a patronising American Northerner depicting American Southerners as thinking about nothing except hating "Yankees" and going on and on ad nauseam about the Civil War because these Southerners have nothing else in their sad little lives to occupy them. It is as grossly insulting, hideously condescending and absurdly misrepresentative as that. I might as well announce that the English have an anti-Scottish obsession (it sometimes seems that way nowadays). Would not do so, of course, because I am fully aware that making negative generalisations about whole nations or ethnic groups is the very essence of racism. Could some responsible member of your staff please take Hal Colebatch aside and explain this to him?

NO INTERNET, NO PROBLEM
Re: Bill Croke's Out of Touch:

What a wonderful piece of writing! It made me remember my own childhood in rural Alabama in the '40s and '50s. There was a lump in my throat when I finished reading it and a hunger in my heart for a return to the simpler life. Thanks again for the memories.
-- Ruth Warren
Canal Fulton, Ohio

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