John McGahern Quotes
When I was in my 20s it did occur to me that there was something perverted about an attitude that thought that killing somebody was a minor offence compared to kissing somebody.
Birnbaum, Robert. "John McGahern." Identity Theory, 21 Aug. 2002, www.identitytheory.com/john-mcgahern/.
Mandelstam was later sent to a Soviet gulag for writing a poem denouncing Stalin. He died there.
This proverb only makes sense in the light of understanding the Arab concept of revenge—“blood.” In a rural desert environment where little can be expected of government, the Arabs have developed a law enforcement and peace keeping mechanism which while primitive from modern standards, nevertheless worked to some degree. It is that revenge—“blood” is a moral necessity and obligation of all people, and revenge is not limited by time or to the individuals involved in the first incidence. The immediate family are the first to extract revenge, but the extended family follows and often the entire clan. Sometimes revenge is tribal or even national. Anyone who fails to revenge a member in his group is not only a disgrace, but is a clear and present danger to the group because then they can be attacked with impunity. So revenge is a strong obligation of the group members and blood must be paid with blood no matter how many generations it may take. The only thing that keeps me and my family safe, is the surety what whosoever kills one of us will themselves be killed or if they die a natural death we will take revenge on one of the evildoers relatives. Crime must never pay!
He was the first person to make the distinction in English law between murder and accidental homicide. Earlier they both carried the same death penalty. Bracton, with murder and with theft, wrote of the concept of “mens rea”—criminal mind or intent which is a fundamental principle of modern law. Aristotle, in his Nichomachean Ethics, made similar distinctions of responsibility depending on intent, but Bracton codified it in English law.
A number of the American soldiers refused to obey Calley's illegal order. Some helped some villagers to escape, and a helicopter pilot landed betreen Callery's men and the villagers they were shooting at, and ordered his helicopter machine gun crew to fire on the soldiers if they did back off. The soldiers stopped firing at the civillians. However, his and other reports of the massacre were covered up by the military for a few years. Mai Lai was not the only major war crime perpetrated by Americans in the Vietnam War; there had been a few others. But given the years of fighting and the many opportunities war crimes violations under orders were quite rare. The Viet Cong had many more war crimes that they perpetrated, and our South Vietnamese allies repeatedly committed war crimes against their own people.
John McGahern was an Irish writer and novelist. He is regarded as one of the most important writers of the latter half of the twentieth century.
