Posted on 04/16/2011 8:21:29 PM PDT by TheDingoAteMyBaby
God almighty people have been doing that for centuries! The Irish spent most of their time doing that to each other!
Yep. All those concentration camps and extermination centres in Belfast. All the Jews being tortured, deported and robbed in Londonderry. Yep...Britain is way way worse than Nazi Germany. It all makes sense to Irish nationalists. They fixate so much on their supposed wrongs and they can happily ignore everything else going wrong in the world. They are so oppressed. Poor babies.
And there are far fewer conditional requirements to be Prime Minister of the UK than to be the President of the USA. There is no age limitation (Pitt was only 24 when he became PM). There is no term limitation (Gladstone became PM five times). There isn’t even an origin limitation. There is no reason why a foreigner cannot become PM (Campbell-Bannerman was a Canadian).
Darn right. You could just hand an agenda out - but where’s the “oomph” in that? You could just say “I do” and sign a piece of paper to get married, but most people like to make more of an occasion.
I find it rather incredible myself that such diverse countries and societies can still be bound together by something that is so simple. India, however, has opted out I believe.
The Queen does not "pull Nigeria and Pakistan into the 18th or 19th centuries" because that is not her job. She is not a tyrant to command them to act in any way. It is up to the duly elected governments of those countries to reform their societies as they see fit. For you to think them backwards is your perception.
Actually you are both, and have been since the 16th Amendment in 1913.
Hint: the potato blight was not, as seems to be commonly thought by Irish nationalists, genetically engineered in a lab in Cambridge university.
Hint 2: The famine is over. Why don't you get over it too?
a-—’Historian Brendan O’ Buachalla has stated that in the 17th and 18th centuries,there was extensive intermingling and intermarriage between the new Scots settlers and the ‘native’ Irish,so that by the 19th century,there existed in Ulster several population groups,apart from many individuals scattered here,partly of Irish descent,partly of Scottish descent and Irish in language and belonged to one of the Protestant faiths’
Ian Adamson ‘The Identity of Ulster’ (1982) page 15
b—’The fact that many native Irish became Protestants is well illustrated for example by the Hearth Money Rolls for the Presbyterian parishes of Stranorlar and Leck in Donegal for the year 1665,as well as the by the presence of old Cruthinic names such as Rooney,Lowry,MacCartan and MacGuinness in the records of the Episcopalian Diocese of Dromore in South and West Down.Representatives of other well-known Gaelic families abound.
Murphys,Maguires,Kellys,Lennons,Reillys,Doghertys and many others are quite numerous.Historian Brendan Adamas has shown that quote “a large part of the native Irish became absorbed in areas such as the North Down into the various Protestant faiths” ‘
Adamson The Ulster People(1991) page 60
c—’Neither must it be assumed that all the Scottish emigrants to Ulster in the Plantation were Protestant.For some were Scottish and English Catholics.Thus a letter from the Bishop of Derry to the Lord Earl of Abercorn in 1692 says that “Sir George Hamilton since he got part of the Popery there,has brought over priests and Jesuits from Scotland”.Historian A Perceval-Maxwell has shown that within just a generation one of the most sucessful parts of the ‘Protestant’ Plantation was in fact led by Roman Catholics’
Adamson(1991)—page 60
The late A.T.Q. Stewart, THE historian and authority on Ulster history:
‘There was much intermarriage,with or without the benefit of the clergy than convential history makes allowance for.Many planters became Catholic and many natives became Protestant.
It is a gross and emotional oversimplification to see the Ulster Plantation in terms of ruthless Protestants seizing land and chasing the Catholics into the bogs and the hills.
In fact,history and recent archaeology shows us that in fact a very substantial proportion of the original population was not disturbed at all’
‘The Narrow Ground-Studies of Ulster History’(1986)
It's almost always a sub-optimal solution, true.
The IRA was wrong as were the Brits for refusing to correct the past oppression and recognize Irish rights. The innocent victims of the Troubles did not deserve the harm that could have been avoided.
Irish rights WERE recognised. After all, Eire IS an independent country now, is it not? Unfortunately it is not possible to correct the past oppression (whatever that was) simply because we can never correct it sufficiently for the demands of the extremists. Eventually their demands become sheer extortion. Its a bit like slave reparations in the US. Slavery is widely recognised now as being wrong, but it WAS abolished. In fact a lot of time, money and lives were expended in abolishing it. The US nearly destroyed itself for the concept of all pervading liberty. And yet, even today Black leaders wax on about how badly done to they are, and how "white privilege" is holding them back, and how they deserve compensation for past injustices. Where does it all end? No American living today is responsible for dragging their ancestors over from Africa. No Briton alive today is responsible for Drogheda or the potato famine. We all of us have to live with the consequences of the past, even if it is not our fault, but I'll be damned if I will go on some massive guilt trip for the benefit of Ireland for my whole life. If nothing else I think THEY deserve better than that.
Neither are the British.
Since 1981 and the Nationality Act.
‘Are you saying the Brits didn’t conduct a campaign against innocent Irish citizens? Who was responsible for the famine?’
No, they didnt. The worst that can be laid at Britain’s door 1845-48 is incompetence.
Britain in fact bought millions of tons of grain in 1846 at the nation’s expense and sent it to Ireland to allievate the suffering.
And here is the big ‘secret’ that Irish-Americans and Irish Nationalists ignore about the famine:
Irish Protestants died.
Lots of them.
‘protestant’ Ireland was hit as hard as other areas.
The idea that Britain deliberately starved the Irish is a nonsense.
The plantation of Ulster started in 1607.
Really? All those anti-papists were there pre-1640?
An outright untruth.
It was much more low-tech; simply starve them out and force them to flee. Comparing them to more recent mass murders in no way lessens what they did, though it is nice to see Britain switch its role from America’s weak little brother to Germany’s lapdog in the European Union.
Queen Victoria donated 1 million pounds (a huge amount in todays currency) of her own money to Irish famine relief.
On the contrary, it is the only conceivable system able to last more than a thousand years! Remember, democracy only lasts until the public learns that they can vote themselves money out of the treasury... three hundred years, at most...
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