The Lessons of Northern Ireland

 Half my ancestry is from Northern Ireland, my cousin has written on the history of Ulster, and I remember the start of the Troubles there, when the Catholic/Sinn Fein movement seemed in tune with the student movements in France and Germany, not to mention our civil rights movement.

Bottom line--I've tracked developments there with more interest than elsewhere in Europe or the world for that matter.  To me it's an object lesson in human nature, a lesson to put alongside the lesson from Israel/Palestine and the various racial and ethnic conflicts here and abroad.  People are able to discern differences in fine distinctions and often use them as the basis for enmity. Such patterns tend to endure through time, and often lead to vicious cycles of eye for an eye. 

(Watch the TV series Fauda for another example of the same.)

Here's the Times on the current status. It also seems that there's a cycle at work--the young get riled up, get violent, get exhausted, and there's less violence for a while until a new generation comes along. 

Marching Season and Remembering the Past

Here's a report on Marching Day in Northern Ireland.

The Protestant Orange Order is able to muster a lot of people, including a 6-mile long parade, ostensibly to celebrate a battle 330+ years ago.  I write "ostensibly" because it's really an assertion of community identity, at least incidentally in opposition to their Catholic neighbors.

Compare that to the remembrance ceremonies of the white South, celebrating the Confederacy of 158 years ago.  I'm sure there are some scattered around, but they aren't significant enough to warrant much attention. Why the difference?

You suggest one is celebrating a victory, the other an ultimate defeat?

That might logically make a difference, but where are the big parades celebrating the Union victory?  The closest we can come is the Juneteenth observances of recent years. And, more importantly, there's no organization dedicated to the celebration, as well as agitating for the cause now.  We had one such organization, the Grand Army of the Republic, but the GAR ended with the last vet, in 1956.

So why do Americans forget the past more easily than those in Northern Ireland? 

I suspect part of the answer is immigration: we've added millions of people who've no live interest in the fight for the union or the abolition of slavery.

Ireland's Second Language?

Is Polish, according to a recent article on the declining usage of Gaelic.

Oh, by the way that's Northern Ireland, not Eire.