St. Patrick's Day Wish- A Unified Ireland

[Scott MacGregor]

Forty-four million Americans can trace some or all of their heritage back to a tiny green speck of peat and rock in the North Atlantic known as the nation of Ireland.

Ireland had been conquered many times, by Vikings, Celts, Normans, --all of whom assimilated, contributed, and as they say, "became more Irish than the Irish".

Then, the Anglo-Saxons came along to torment and destroy Ireland. This continued for over 500 years until they won it all in 1690 and then proceeded to eradicate one of the most enlightened cultures that the Olde World had ever known.

Then, during the mid 1800's, a period of systematic genocide began.

English historians covered up this atrocity by describing it a "potato famine" and an uncaring world readily accepted this nonsense but didn't question why all the poultry, fish, grains, and livestock were shipped from Ireland to feed England and Her Majesty's far flung armies actively engaged in British Imperialistic nation building.

At the time this blight was affecting the potato crop there was enough replenishable food sources in Ireland to feed a population of 16 million souls.

There are over 1200 documented mass graves in Ireland from that era.

While England claims that approximately 1 million Irish starved to death and another 2 million emigrated, their own census figures from the era betray them. In addition to the emigrants, over 5 million Irish disappeared during this era, scaling this event at the magnitude of the holocaust suffered by European Jews during WW2.

There have been many genocides over history-but few as misunderstood and successfully covered up as the Irish Holocaust. The truth is always a casualty when the victors get to write the history.

Why does Ireland matter? the Irish Holocaust changed the world, and it shaped and changed the course of American history.

Meanwhile, the Irish nation never recovered from this trauma until the early 1990s when its Celtic Tiger economy succeeded in finally freeing this resilient culture, at least economically, from the clutches its ruinous history.

Why does Ireland matter? --Because a unified Ireland is as central to the concept of Democratic freedom as American Freedom is. The far flung Irish who survived by escaping to the 4 corners of the earth are owed something for their incalculable contributions to all humanity.

It is one of history's great ironies that Washington's Continental army, 50% of which was comprised of Irish regulars, helped to free our country from Anglo-Saxon tyranny but could not free their own. We owe the Irish our support in their efforts to unify their country.

So, on this upcoming St. Patrick's day-I ask O'Bryan, Shannon, Murphy, Foran, Corrigan, Sweeney, Kucinich, and Karabatkovic, and all true Irish and Irish for a day to put down their green top hats and shamrocks, raise their jars of green beer high, and say it like they mean it:

England-Get the Hell Out of Ireland!

Happy St. Pat's t'ya

Slainte'

[Jim O'Bryan]

So, on this upcoming St. Patrick's day-I ask O'Bryan, Shannon, Murphy, Foran, Corrigan, Sweeney, Kucinich, and Karabatkovic, and all true Irish and Irish for a day to put down their green top hats and shamrocks, raise their jars of green beer high, and say it like they mean it:

England-Get the Hell Out of Ireland!

Happy St. Pat's t'ya

Slainte'

Amen brother


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