In Reply to: re: re: it pisses me off posted by Huh on June 22, 2007 at 10:56:23:

Your tone - terms such as 'inbred' - merely drags your 'arguments' down to a level that leaves a bad taste in the reader's mouth.

You may have a point but the poster may also have a point. The French went to enormous lengths to 'defend' their language against Franglais and the ever encroaching hollywoodisation of the French language. Precisely the same area of argument as asking that phone companies would buy a voice machine that has a local accent (bear in mind that there's no one at the end of the phone merely a digital un, deux, trois, etc. reassembled sentences). Nobody accused the French of being inbred - apart from GW Bush perhaps.

To attribute hatred and fascism and poor genetics to the person who gets annoyed about an English accent on an Irish phone system is merely extremism of the type that you claim to be against.

Nationalism is kinda common these days. The United Nations for example - it's united not untied - comprising 192 separate nations - nation states - expressing their different 'nationalisms' with flags, anthems, dress, many different languages an accents. The United Nations tries to do good - it doesn't always succeed but you can't compare its kind of nationalism with fascism that decides their accent is the only one and everyone else should die.

It's like love too - it's generally a good thing but it's also the biggest excuse produced in court for murder ever invented. The poor unfortunate who drowned his kids and killed himself the other day - was love the reason? Possibly but that doesn't mean that love is a bad thing in all its manifestations. Nationalism is similar to love - it's not all bad.

My point is that your response to a reasonable point was a lot more offensive than any putative motive/poitical leaning of the original poster.

As another example of nationalism I personally found it a bit overwhelming recently walking through Shannon Airport's transit area to be confronted by a large number of men and women with foreign accents belonging to a foreign nation. They just happened to be wearing desert combat fatigues and were on their way to or from a foreign country where they kill people in support of their own brand of 'nationalism'. It's not that I didn't particularly like their accents but I guess they weren't Irish so that's okay then? I am not allowed to be pissed off because we are all in the global economy now and nationalism is dead?

You can't simply set up skittles and knock them down attributing your hate topics to every other poster who strays slightly from your worldview.

A little bit less poorly-directed anger and a bit more fun would help this forum.