Paper versus digital reading

On the left is Barton Creeth reading a book. On the right, Jason Ashford is reading his phone. In the middle is me drawing. On the weekend of Setpember 26-28 I and a few friends took a trip to Bushmills and some took the chance for a digital detox - to "deassimilate from the cyber hive", as Ray Mears put it.

Charles Bremner (@CharlesBremner) wrote in the Times that "Permanent digital connection is bane of modern life". The Guardian reported that "Germany ponders ground-breaking law to combat work-related stress". The Spectator wrote:

An epistolary response to David McCann (@dmcbfs) and Barton Creeth (@bartoncreeth)

Woke up with a sore throat-interesting debate last night on republicanism and unionism plus newspapers @bartoncreeth @brianjohnspencr
— David McCann (@dmcbfs) March 2, 2014

On Saturday March 1 2014 David McCann (@dmcbfs), Barton Creeth (@bartoncreeth) and I had a few drinks in a well known Belfast pub. The evening began with David and Barton discussing American politics and when I arrived later, we turned to Irish politics.

It was firey but good-mannered. I said I would respond in full. I'm not sure if this was heeded. But here it is. I've looked at a few things:

- Irish identity and being Irish.
- The sense of community.
- Pearse and how religion can no more be separated from Pearse than Pearse the person could be separated from religion.
- Catholic State for a Catholic people.
- Deport protestant unionists.

Identity

There is no single definition or model of what it is to be Irish. As I have tried to show in my blog series on Irish and British identity - 'Being Irish is not about being not British' - and - 'Being British is not about being not Irish' - too many people hold and push recklessly idiosyncratic, exclusivist, racist (my blog series on 'Irish racism' here) and ethnicist notions of what it is to be Irish. No man has a monopoly on what it is to be Irish. Being Irish is what you want it to be and make it to be. As George Bernard Shaw said: