America the Dutiful - Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America - page 60

ones to obey. Plainly ridiculous prohibitions, such as not spitting on the sidewalk or not ra-
cing your bicycle at high speed through a crowded shopping mall, will simply be ignored.
Irish attitudes to the law are shaped by the fact that for many centuries, the justice system
in the country was not their own but a colonial imposition. This is an excellent excuse for
parking your car in someone's front garden. People who shoplift iPods are really victims of
colonial oppression. They might even get round to using this defence in court.
The Irish are a Catholic nation, not a Puritan one. They can be sternly repressive about
sex, but much of this dates from the Great Famine, when questions of fertility control, pop-
ulation growth, celibacy, emigration, the division of the land and the like began to bulk
large. For the most part, the Irish are not an easily shockable people. One can make out-
rageous remarks about sex, though not necessarily demeaning comments about the Virgin
Mary. In some parts of Protestant Britain, the opposite is true. Morally speaking, they are
a remarkably tolerant people. On the whole, the Irish are a moral nation (very few of them
get murdered, for example), but not, like a lot of Americans, moralistic. The vigilante spirit
is largely foreign to the country, though the Irish have shown themselves well capable of
racism in recent times. Even so, it would never occur to them to form a posse to drive pros-
titutes (as opposed to drug dealers) out of town.
The Irish have also been wary of the Protestant work ethic, which is not a fancy way
of suggesting that they are bone idle. This, too, can mark them out from the work-hungry
Americans. Irish labourers sweated blood to build the roads and canals of Britain, a country
that had helped to despatch many thousands of their compatriots to their graves in the Fam-
ine years. Yet they managed for the most part to keep work in proper perspective, and knew
that enjoying yourself is morally speaking a good deal more important. Planting potatoes,
the traditional economic activity of the Irish, leaves you with a fair amount of leisure, as
potatoes generally look after themselves. The Irish thus had time for their feast days and
holidays, and devoted large amounts of energy to socialising, as well as to creeping out at
night to take pot shots at landlords to whom they might deliver solemn pledges of loyalty
during the day.
Nor are the Irish earnest and high-minded. On the contrary, they can be witty, irreverent,
satirical and iconoclastic, which is not on the whole true of the inhabitants of Holland,
Michigan, or Provo, Utah. They are also deeply unsentimental and have a keen sense of
the ridiculous, which is also not generally the case in Holland or Provo. Drinking, dancing,
cursing and gambling are not only tolerated in Ireland but sometimes compulsory. Religion
there is not notably at odds with gratification. It is true that there have been plenty of Irish
kill-joys. A nineteenth-century bishop once remarked that Irish dancing was morally speak-
ing the best kind of dancing there was. He meant that there could be no groping, since Irish
dancing involves holding your arms by your sides. He also meant that it is so exhausting
that it leaves little energy for any more dubious acts of pleasure. Even so, English visit-