From: Warrl kyree Tale'sedrin (warrl@blarg.net)
Date: Sun Dec 28 1997 - 12:25:31 MST
> From: Michael Lorrey <retroman@together.net>
> SOmeone a bit back cited that one is more likely to be murdered in
> the US than in Northern Ireland, yet why is it that many more
> Northern Irish immigrate or travel as tourists to the US than the
> reverse??
I question this, simply because there are more people of northern
Irish descent living in the US than in Northern Ireland. (There's a
tad more room for them, for one thing.)
Now I could easily believe that the *percentage* of people in
northern Ireland who wish to travel to the US (temporarily or
permanently) is higher than the percentage of people in the US --
even if you restrict consideration to those of northern Irish descent
-- who wish to travel to Northern Ireland.
One reason for this is a psychological factor: many people of
European descent in the US think of visits to their ancestral
European homeland as visits to "the old country" and much of Europe
still looks upon the Americas as "the new world" -- and, particularly
in the US but to some extent in most of the industrialized world,
there is a bias in favor of the new as compared to the old.
(I'd be interested in seeing some statistics to show whether I'm
right about that or not. I confess to having nothing but
reasonable-sounding speculation.)
> > Fourth- There is a lack of correct historical perspective- How
> > many of us have heard about the "Wild, wild west? Crime rates in
> > the late 1800s in the US were low- Do you really think that a
> > bunch of civil war veterans on the western frontier would let a
> > gang terrorize their town?
>
> I think that the "wild wild west" was the first example of the
> sensationalist tendencies of the free American press, but I think
> that the term came more from the habitat, originally.
You know, "Wild Wild West" really *should* be capitalized: it's the
name of a touring theater company and the series of plays they did.
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