From: Michael S. Lorrey (mike@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Apr 26 2000 - 10:08:27 MDT
Charlie Stross wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 26, 2000 at 10:14:14AM -0400, QueeneMUSE@aol.com wrote:
> >
> >
> > > The Unionists are Irish by your definition ... and non-native, by your
> > > previous definition. Which do you want to use?
> >
> > Again, it's clearly a question of native by birth (in this case you can be a
> > Native New Yorker and be Jamaican) or by heritage. I understand the
> > difference, why would you pretend not to?
> >
> I'm not "pretending" anything; I'm just highly pissed off with a common
> American reaction -- to blame one side for a civil war, when both sides
> are pretty much evenly to blame (judging by the number of murders).
>
> The hard men with the guns are all a bunch of bloodthirsty clowns, and
> we'd all be better off without them. But arguing that the problem is
> "British imperialism" is to reduce it to an absurd proposition. Sure,
> the original invasion of Ireland in the 17th century was reprehensible.
> Sure, the actions of the settlers' descendants since then were also bad.
> But pulling the British government out of the North right now isn't going
> to fix that; it's just going to make the UVF start on a rampage of ethnic
> cleansing, and make the pIRA or the cIRA or whatever they call themselves
> this week retaliate in kind.
Unfortunately, we have a tradition of booting the British out here, so our
sympathies tend to go to the 'underdogs'. After the rev war here, many tories
stayed. Some got picked on, sure, while others hightailed it for Canada and then
sicced their lawyers to try to regain the property they had abandoned (and when
that didn't work, they instigated the War of 1812 (the 'British' troops were
mostly Canadians)). You might call Canada the North American equivalent of
Northern Ireland, and you've also got a put upon Catholic minority up there too.
I'm sure Canadians just love the Ulster Unionists...
As for myself, a Catholic Scottish American whose family got relocated to Nova
Scotia from the Gordon's Highlands, I've got little or no sympathies for the
headaches the Protestant British have brought on themselves, while at the same
time I have no sympathies for the marxist ideology of most IRA members. Frankly
you deserve each other.
Mike Lorrey
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