Being Protestant and Bloody Sunday

James Nesbitt played Ivan Cooper in 'Bloody Sunday' in 2002

As Paul Bew reminded us, Bloody Sunday in Derry in January 1972 stands as the worst massacre of British citizens by British troops since Peterloo in 1819. Ruth Dudley Edwards said:

"Unionists wanted to believe – until Lord Saville proved otherwise – that innocent protesters in Derry on Bloody Sunday had been carrying weapons."

Ireland's Capitalist Crown

Just as Ireland had a "parallel Monarchy" in the form of the imperial Roman Church, so Ireland now has a "parallel Crown" in the form of capitalist bonds and debentures.

Ireland's venerated martyr James Connolly wrote in 1914 that "Ireland has no war with Germany, it welcomes the German as a brother struggling towards the light", and went further than David Cameron by calling migrants to Ireland "hordes", a "swarm of locusts", "boys of the bull-dog breed" and "Brit-Huns", making Ireland "Rotten" with a "new plantation". James Connolly wrote in a 3 part essay series titled 'Slackers'.

Unionists and nationalists write to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson

Oil on canvas By Sidney Edward Dickinson

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson coined the expression "self-determination", a catch-penny cry in Ireland. Dated August 1 1918, Edward Carson and other unionists sent a letter to the U.S. President which responded to the Nationalist Manifesto sent to Wilson in June 1918 and openly circulated. Mr Carson and his co-signatories wrote:

Edward Carson and John Redmond respond to the Easter Rising (May 3 1916)

Cartoon of Carson and Redmond by Percy Fearon, 'Poy'. 

On May 3 1916 the House of Commons convening for a motion titled ‘Disturbances in Ireland, Resignation of Mr. Birrell’. John Redmond and Edward Carson both spoke in reaction to the Easter Rising that broke out on April 24 1916. The Ulster poet John Hewitt said: "I accepted Sir Edward Carson and his twin, John Redmond, as men from the same country as myself, who had diverging ideas about the governing of it." John Redmond said:

1916 Revisionism

NBC presenter Brian Williams

E.L. Doctorow said "History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew." Napoleon said "History is a set of lies agreed upon." Jane Austen wrote in her novel Mansfield Park

"The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!"

Sinn Fein revisionism

Gerry Adams wrote about the 'Good Old IRA', equating the PIRA to the IRA that brought about partition 

Sinn Fein and IRA were not about attaining human rights but about attaining a united Irish socialist republic at the cost of human rights and human life. Most of the Civil Rights demands Sinn Fein claim the Provisional IRA secured through violence were achieved before the organization was even born at the end of 1969 In 1972 the IRA announced that they would rid Ireland of the British even if they had “to demolish Belfast brick-by-brick”. Martin McGuinness said around 1973:

"It doesn’t matter a fuck what John Hume says, we’ll go on fighting until we get a united Ireland."

Orange and Green, we're all Paddies

The Simpsons portrays Saint Patrick's day and the division in Ireland between Orange and Green 

Many Protestants born in Ireland strenuously and stridently object to being Irish.

To the outsider there's not a shade of difference between the Orangemen and the Green Gael, the planter and the native. The English, American and Europeans and the world see us all as Irish equally.

The murder of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo would have been like the murder of the Prince of Wales in Dublin

The Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated on June 28 1914. This event was the key turning points in twentieth century  history. The Archduke, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was shot in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip. The assassin was a member of the Black Hand gang, a Serbian nationalists group, whose aim was to free Serbia of the rule of the Austro-Hungarian empire. 

Irish teachers must be Catholic missionaries

Eamonn de Valera genuflecting at the feet of Bishop John Charles McQuaid

Michael Nugent wrote following the publication of the report, 'Irish school teachers must be Catholic missionaries,' that religious discrimination against the irreligious and non-Catholic is accepted as part of the Irish way of life, adding that "Irish school teachers must be Catholic missionaries." He wrote:

"Religious discrimination, like all discrimination, undermines the dignity of the human person. In this case religious discrimination in our education system has undermined the human rights of parents and their children. It also denies atheists and religious minorities from their right to access the teaching profession in a democratic Republic without religious discrimination.

Fintan O'Toole on "culture" and "tradition" in Northern Ireland

Chatting with Fintan O'Toole

Writing in 2000 Fintan O'Toole made three powerful points (here, here and here) about Northern Ireland and the issue of "culture" and "tradition". This can be read as a broadly framed analysis of parading and Twelfth July culture.

One, there is more to Northern Ireland that monolithic Protestant-Unionist and monolithic Catholic-Nationalist:

Culture Night - A middle class 12th

A cartoon of Belfast's Culture Night by Ian Knox

Newton Emerson wrote that the annual Culture Night shows how many extremely middle-class people there are in Belfast. Culture Night is, in his words, "A sort of middle-class Twelfth." He also wrote:

The inglorious Twelfth

John Hewitt, Ulster poet, at a 12th July march

Seamus Heaney wrote a poem, 'Orange Drums, Tyrone, 1966', about his experience of the Twelfth July:

'The lambeg balloons at his belly, weighs
Him back on his haunches, lodging thunder
Grossly there between his chin and his knees.
He is raised up by what he buckles under.

A Northern Protestant speaks to a 1916 commemoration

Belfast born Pat Storey at the 1916 commemoration event, 

The Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath and Kildare Most Rev Pat Storey was invited to speak at state event to mark the 1916 Rising, described by the Irish Times as a "Catholic, republican commemoration". On May 5 2015 the northern Protestant, born and raised in Belfast, addressed the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Irish President Michael D Higgins, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams and other dignitaries. Pat Storey said:

"It is not a part of my story. But I want, and I need, to try to understand it. I need to walk in your shoes generously. [It meant] relating to the commemorations of your community when I would rather remember wrongs done to mine."

James Connolly describes the 12th July

Born in Edinburgh of Irish Parents, James Connolly was a one-time British soldier turned Irish revolutionary leader who headed the Easter Rising of 1916. Connolly wrote 'July the 12th', published in Forward on July 12 1913, where he described his visit to a 12th July march:

"As this Saturday is the 12th of July, and as I am supposed to be writing about the North of Ireland in particular, it becomes imperative that I say something about this great and glorious festival. 

The Protestantisation of Southern Ireland

COI Dean Victor Griffin who opposed the Protestant ascendency in the North and the Catholic ascendancy in the South, was the first public representative of new-look Protestantism in Ireland said Roy Foster

Ian D'Alton wrote that the Irish Free State "was rescued by Catholics becoming Protestants." This was a formulation most prominently articulated by the recently deceased Eddie Holt - The Protestantisation of the South's middle class. Coincidentally I wrote in 2015 that 'The Calvinist Ulsterman is more of a Catholic Irishman than is commonly realised.' The religious proclivities of the North and the South have inverted.

Jamie Bryson - Latex Loyalist

Being born middle class but believing you're loyalist. 

Jamie Bryson is a middle class imposter. Just as Hitler wasn't German, Jamie Bryson isn't Working Class protestant. (I invoke Godwin's Law as a point of irony because Bryson does it so regularly.) This has been the grand sham of Northern Ireland since December 3 2012: The self-appointed loyalist big mouth isn't even working class.

Conor Cruise O'Brien - The church and school helps to encourage, exalt and extend tribal-sectarian self-righteousness

Cartoon of Conor Cruise O'Brien

[UPDATE - John Hume wrote in The Irish Times, May 18 1964, "Bigotry and a fixation about religious divisions are the first thing that strike any visitor to the North."]

Our parents are patrons of prejudice, bequeathers of bigotry. Churches and chapels inculcate hate. 

He was that Irish essayist and polemicist so "sorely deficient in Anglophobia". Conor Cruise O'Brien (who was satirised in the 'Gentle Black and Tans'), drew across the grain on so many issues. He was the arch-"revisionist", a charge he countered here. A controversialist and a man of irrepressible energies, we sorely lack his type today.

There is no comparison between the American and Irish struggle for independence

Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

American independence was an Anglo-protestant insurrection of European colonists against fellow colonists over confiscated lands. Irish independence was an uprising of the native Catholic and socialist super-Gael against the coloniser.

Ethical Irishness and ethically remembering Ireland's history

A young Michael D. Higgins

Irishness is about ethics, not ethnics. Michael D. Higgins said that his would be a "Presidency of ideas - recognising and open to new paradigms of thought and action". Through speeches the President has explored the importance and challenge of ethics in Irish life and Ireland’s relationships abroad. There are four select Special Initiatives which mark his stewardship of the Áras an Uachtaráin, one of which is the Ethics Initiative.

Michael Longley - Green wank and Orange wank

Michael Longley with his portrait by Colin Davidson. See Longley with Mallie and I here.

Michael Longley met David Remnick on his 1994 visit to Belfast. They went for a walk and talk at the Giant’s Ring in South Belfast in 1994.

"These sides are divided from each other in their souls. They adhere to ridiculous visions of themselves and their histories. I call it ‘the green wank’ and ‘the orange wank’."

Ireland's Revolutionary and Fairyhouse traditions

Irish Grand National (1921) - Won by Mr A. Wills’ ‘Bohernore’ at Fairyhouse. 

Stephen Gwynn wrote an account of Dublin during the Easter Rising of April 1916:

"On Monday a very large proportion of the officers from the Curragh and the Dublin garrison were at the Fairyhouse races. In the Castle itself there was only the ordinary guard."

1916 feminist rhetoric versus 2016 reality

‘Free State Freaks - No. II’, cartoon of Desmond Fitzgerald, father of Garret, attributed to Countess Markievicz 

Andy Pollak wrote:

"In the South it’s even worse, with only 16% of the Dail’s members being women... This puts Ireland 88th in the world, behind such paragons of democracy and women’s equality as Burkina Faso, Gabon, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates (the US is barely any better at 16.8%). Ireland comes 25th out of 28 EU parliaments. And that woefully low figure – 16% – has never been exceeded in the 96 year history of Dail Eireann, which must have Countess Markievicz, the first woman elected to both the House of Commons and the Dail in 1918, turning in her grave."

David Remnick on the normality of Northern Ireland

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker since 1998, staff writer since 1992. Illustration by Stanley Chow (@stan_chow).

The former Chief Constable of the PSNI Matt Bagott said in 2014:

"In terms of ordinary crime, [Nothern Ireland] is not the most challenging. In fact, it is probably the safest place I have ever worked. Inner city crime in Peckham, where you have street gangs and hundreds of robberies every month, is much more challenging crime-wise."

Ian Knox on the Royal Visit

A nice cartoon from Ian Knox, one that got away. 

Why we need to know Sayyid Qutb

There is no such thing as the End of History or the inevitable ascent of man and liberal democracy. Ideas are in sempiternal competition and anyone can win out and dominate, but there is no such thing as hegemonic finality. Triumph and Disaster are two impostors just the same. People make a particular fetish out of claiming their generation as particularly afflicted, and of their epoch of especially violent and unstable. W.B. Yeats wrote about "the growing murderousness of the world." Those words apply today; proving that history teaches us we learn nothing from history; and that madness and murderousness is inevitable and unavoidable. All we need to ensure is that good men do not do nothing.

T.K. Whitaker - A United Ireland would pose a "formidable" if not "intolerable" burden (1968)

Jack Lynch and Terence O'Neill, with T.K. Whitaker in the rear-ground, Ireland's rough equivalent to Sir Kenneth Bloomfield

Stormont is like a giant ATM, a quango spending a budget. Ireland has unshackled itself from the worst of Troika rule but stills faces severe fiscal headwinds and uncomfortable belt-tightening. Northern Ireland is an overgrown man child dependent on parental handouts. Southern Ireland is a recently graduated student trying to find a job and a stable footing in the world. Neither is in a position to make matrimony. Not at the moment and not without substantial reforms and rehabilitative measures from Northern Ireland and a more rebalanced economic structure in the south.

Being of planter stock

British planter in Jamaica, by George Spratt

John Hewitt, of "planter stock", wrote he was 'As native in my thought as any here.' Belfast poet and son of a British soldier, Michael Longley said that Hewitt's verse taught people not to be embarrassed or ashamed of their connection to colonialism. It's not something I was conscious of growing up. I was always Irish and British, I watched the BBC and lived on the island of Ireland.

David Remnick - Gerry Adams has no right to the comparison with Mandela (1994)

Gerry Adams, by Martin Rowson

David Remnick visited troubled and torn Belfast in the early 1990s. He wrote about his experience and interpretation in the New Yorker, published in April 1994. You can read Remnick's account of his meeting with Gerry Adams in his Sinn Fein office in early 1990s Belfast here. It was an incredibly broad and detailed account of life in Belfast and Northern Ireland at the time. A note on how Belfast was very serene outside of the hotspots, how loyalist and republican paramilitaries are simply base gangs like in any other city; he painted a picture from his trip to Paisley's church, Martyr's Memorial; told us about Gerry Adams's hallowed republican forbears; and retold us about his ramble in the greens of outer Belfast with Michael Longley. One of the aspects of the long essay that most hit me was when David Remnick said that Adams no right to the comparison with Mandela or Arafat:

Dublin in Easter 1916 through the eyes of a Trinity Student

Dorothy Stopford Price, a Church of Ireland Protestant born in Dublin who lived through and recorded Easter 1916

Dorothy Stopford Price was was born in Dublin, on September 9th 1890. She was in Dublin for Easter 1916. Writing from the Under-Secretary’s Lodge in Phoenix Park in Dublin, home of Sir Matthew Nathan (a key figure in the British administration of Ireland), the 26 year old recorded her view of a city in revolt.

Day 7 and the last of the Easter Rising - By James Stephens

Portrait of James Stephens by Irish writer, poet, and painter George W. Russell (AA), circa 1910.

James Stephens was an Irish writer living and writing in the age of Irish writers, where his contemporaries were Joyce, Yeats, George Russell, O'Casey, Maud Gonne, Lady Gregory, Horace Plunkett, Synge, Oliver St John Gogarty, George Moore and many others. Stephens was a Dubliner living in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916. He logged for posterity his experience of that week in his book 'The Insurrection in Dublin'. I have republished his account of Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, the Wednesday, the Thursday, the Friday and the Saturday. You can read his account of the Sunday, Day Seven and the end of the Rising, April 30 1916 below. He wrote:

"The Insurrection has not ceased.

Day Six of the Easter Rising - By James Stephens

James Stephens and James Joyce in Paris, circa 1934.

James Stephens was in Dublin during the Easter 1916 Rising. He documented his take on events in 'The Insurrection in Dublin'. I have republished his account of Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. You can read his account of Saturday April 29 1916, Day 6 of the fighting here, where James Stephens wrote:

"This morning also there has been no bread, no milk, no meat, no newspapers, but the sun is shining. It is astonishing that, thus early in the Spring, the weather should be so beautiful. 

Day Five of the Easter Rising - By James Stephens

James Stephens, James Joyce and John Sullivan talking on Rue Raspail, Paris.

James Stephens, fellow Dubliner, writer and and friend of James Joyce, spent all of Easter 1916 in the Irish capital, the theatre of the republican Rising. He documented his experience of life in the city among the lead and the cordite his book 'The Insurrection in Dublin'. I have republished his account of Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, the Wednesday and the Thursday. You can read his account of the Friday, Day Five of the Rising, April 28 1916 below. He wrote:

"This morning there are no newspapers, no bread, no milk, no news. The sun is shining, and the streets are lively but discreet. All people continue to talk to one another without distinction of class, but nobody knows what any person thinks.

Day Four of the Easter Rising - By James Stephens

James Stephens, by Patrick Tuohy, RHA.

The Dublin native James Stephens did a lot of travelling. He was in Dublin for the entire duration of the Easter Rising in 1916. An event he documented in detail in 'The Insurrection in Dublin'. I have republished Easter Monday and Tuesday and his account of the Wednesday. You can read his account of Day Four of the Rising, April 27 1916 below. He wrote:

"Again, the rumours greeted one. This place had fallen and had not fallen. Such a position had been captured by the soldiers; recaptured by the Volunteers, and had not been attacked at all. But certainly fighting was proceeding. Up Mount Street, the rifle volleys were continuous, and the coming and going of ambulance cars from that direction were continuous also. Some spoke of pitched battles on the bridge, and said that as yet the advantage lay with the Volunteers. 

Day Three of the Easter Rising - By James Stephens

Troops of the Ulster Volunteer Force move into Dublin to support the British Forces during the Easter Rising of 1916.

The Dublin writer James Stephens was in Dublin for the whole of the Easter Rising in 1916. He documented what he saw and experienced in 'The Insurrection in Dublin.' I have republished his account of Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday, and below you can read his account of Day Three of the rebellion. James wrote:

"It was three o'clock before I got to sleep last night, and during the hours machine guns and rifle firing had been continuous.

Easter Tuesday 1916 by James Stephens

James Stephens by Sir William Rothenstein

Ninety-nine years ago the Dublin writer James Stephens lived and worked and wrote in and about Dublin. He was there on Easter Monday when the Rising leaders and rebels commandeered the GPO and other landmark buildings across Dublin in a failed attempt to overthrow British rule. He recorded the Saturday and Sunday that preceded the bloodshed, and gave and an account of Day One, Easter Monday 1916 here. He carried on and documented each of fighting that followed. And here you can read in full his experience of the Easter Tuesday, Day Two of the Easter Rising, the 6 days that would change Ireland forever. Compared with Easter 2015 when skies are open blue, the weather of 1916 was markedly more inclement. James Stephens began:

"A sultry, lowering day, and dusk skies fat with rain. 

James Stephens describes Dublin on Easter Monday 1916

Dublin writer James Stephens.

James Stephens is a Dublin writer from the turn of the 19th Century, the time of the Celtic Revival and the age of Irish independencem, the era that produced Yeats, Joyce, George Russell and set the bar for Beckett and Behan and today's writers like Toibin and others. James Stphens wrote a book, 'The Insurrection in Dublin.' In this he documented the six days of hostilities as republicans under Connolly and Pearse sought and fought separation from London, describing Easter Monday 1916 as a day with "the rumour of war and death in the air."

According to Stephens, the republican offensive commenced at 1100 and ended at 0400 the following morning. James Stephens opened Chapter 1 with a swift account of the Saturday and Sunday that preceeded the rising, and thereaftr in detail documented his experience of the city for each day of the fighting, from Easter Monday 1916 to the Saturday after. Here's how his preface began:

"The day before the rising was Easter Sunday, and they were crying joyfully in the Churches “Christ has risen.” On the following day they were saying in the streets “Ireland has risen”."

Christopher Hitchens on partition

W.H. Auden

W. H. Auden wrote, "Two peoples fanatically at odds, With their different diets and incompatible gods." Marya Mannes wrote in 1959 

"Borders are scratched across the 
hearts of men

By strangers with a calm, judicial 
pen,

And when the borders bleed we 
watch with dread

The lines of ink across the map 
turn red."

Is the Irish tricolour a "symbol of compromise"?

Robert Lynd, republican writer born in Belfast. by David Low

Robert Lynd, a former pupil of RBAI, wrote in June 1936 in the New Statesman, ‘In Defence of Pink’:

"Possibly, my love of a blending, a moderation, of colours is due to the fact that I grew up in a country in which the political colours were, in Mr. Chesterton’s phrase, “rich and glowing.” In the Ireland of my youth, orange was not permitted to be blended with green, and green was not perceptively diluted with orange."

G.K. Chesterton on Belfast

G.K. Chesterton by David Low.

[UPDATE - Read here and here for G.K. Chesterton on Unionism and Home Rule respectively]

The Protestant turned Catholic G.K. Chesterton wrote 'Irish Impressions', published in 1919 he shared his thoughts with great contemporary relevance on his time in Ireland. He devoted a chapter to the Ireland's leading industrial centre, 'Belfast and the Religious Question,' in which he wrote scathingly of the superiority of the northern Protestant creed. He began with thoughts on Ireland and poetry:

"Of that cloud of dream which seems to drift over so many Irish poems and impressions, I felt very little in Ireland. There is a real meaning in this suggestion of a mystic sleep; but it does not mean what most of us imagine, and is not to be found where we expect it.

The Calvinist Ulsterman is more of a Catholic Irishman than is commonly realised

Cartoon by Ian Knox

G.K. Chesterton wrote in his book 'Irish Inpressions':

"The Calvinist Ulsterman may be more of a Catholic Irishman than is commonly realised, especially by himself."

The "weirdness" and "freak show" of apartheid education in Northern Ireland

Cartoon by Ian Knox (@IanKnoxcartoon)

Ninety-three per cent of children in Northern Ireland attend segregated elementary schools. Causing what the New Yorker's Patrick Redden Keefe called, "sheer weirdness." Jude Whyte said:

"Politics has replaced the gun and the bomb yet in many ways I feel that we live in a more segregated society than ever. We live apart, educate our children apart... while sport (the source of such unity in the world) remains sectarian, poisoned and divisive."

The vanity and narcissism of the small difference in Ireland

Thomas Nast, ‘St. Patrick's Day, 1867--'The day we celebrate.'’ Harper's Weekly, April 6, 1867.

[UPDATE - Interesting and relevant comments from David Trimble and Daniel Hannan here and here.]

Tomorrow the world will celebrate Saint Patrick's day. Tomorrow the Irish in the troubled Northern region will continue to celebrate and cherish the minutiae that divides them. John Hewitt, Ulster protestant and Irishman, wrote:

‘St Patrick’s Eve,The country came to wake him, men and boysSmoking round the hearth’

AWIT - 'Articulating What I Thought'

'Portrait de poètes' (1942) by Serge Ivanoff: Yanette Delétang-Tardif, Maurice Alphonse Jacques Fombeure, Jean Follain, Rémi Masset, Eugène Guillevic

When I read Orwell, I am reading someone who has written what I'm thinking. I read:

"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is war minus the shooting."

And thought, 'finally someone has expressed and articulated exactly what I felt about sport and the culture around it!' Seamus Heaney wrote:

"One perceptible function of poetry is to write a place into existence." 

That is the role of the writer and poet: to put reality and the everyday experience into words. Jean Follain, friend of Francis Ponge, who Ciaran Carson introduced me to, said:

"Le mot fait corps avec la chose." (The word makes body with the thing)

Roddy Doyle, deviating a little, said:

"Like a lot of writers, I knew I wanted to write but I didn’t know what I wanted to write about. When I wrote The Commitments, it clicked. I felt this was the world that was familiar and I could make it a bit unfamiliar and sparkling."

But the point remains. The role of the writer is to articulate what everyone thinks; doing it in a way that adds spice and energy. They make it everyday but with excitement. They make the mundane profoundly readable.

Except the funny thing was that while I recognised this phenomenon I didn't have the words or terms to express this phenomenon.

That represents a great irony. So I propose 'AWIT' - Articulating What I Thought.

The editorialisation and alteration of sincerely held religious beliefs

The pope by Ralph Steadman

We're told that the religious have sincerely held religious beliefs, unalterable convictions and an indivisible conscience. 

Grayson Perry - If loyalists want to remain loyal to Britain they’ve got to move on too

A banner by Grayson Perry, in the mould of an Orange Lodge standard, following a visit to British loyalists in Belfast 

The cross-dressing potter and artist Grayson Perry said during a 2014 trip to Northern Ireland:

"[Loyalism is] rooted in a vision of Britain that perhaps doesn’t completely gel with the modern 21st century idea of Britain we have nowadays."

And continued:

"If they want to remain loyal to it they’ve got to move on too and it’s all about embracing what Britain stands for today as much as what Britain stood for in the 1950s."

My previous posts on loyalism can be read here. Previous Tumblr notes on loyalism here. 

Andrew Sullivan and the conscience clause

My illustrated tribute to Andrew Sullivan I drew for the Huffington Post.

Paul Givan, theo-unionism and the ecumenical religious right regard gay people as the greatest threat to religion.

Our Patron Saint: Patrick

By Isaac Cruikshank, 'Saint Patrick's Day in the Morning'.

Glenn Bradley is a writer and a member of the Board of Interaction. He wrote on EamonnMalle.com about Saint Patrick, explaining that Ireland's Patron Saint is a figure for unity, not division. Saint Patrick is for everyone, "Catholic, Protestant, Dissenter, Republican, Unionist, Nationalist, White, Black, Asian - it doesn’t matter." Here's Glenn's essay republished in full:

James Joyce on Home Rule

James Joyce by Ronald Searle

In an earlier post I looked at a 25 year old Joyce who wrote about 'The Last Fenian' John O'Leary. In the same year, 1907, he wrote, ‘Home Rule Comes of Age’. "From a hasty study of the history of Home Rule," Joyce made two deductions, one:

"The first is this: the most powerful weapons that England can use against Ireland are no longer those of Conservatism, but those of Liberalism and Vaticanism. Conservatism, though it may be tyrannical, is a frankly and openly inimical doctrine. Its position is logical; it does not want a rival island to arise near Great Britain, or Irish factories to create competition for those in England, or tobacco and wine again to be exported from Ireland, or the great ports along the Irish coast to become enemy naval bases under a native government or a foreign protectorate. Its position is logical, as is that of the Irish separatists which contradicts it point by point. It takes little intelligence to understand that Gladstone has done Ireland greater damage than Disraeli did, and that the most fervid enemy of the Irish Catholics is the head of English Vaticanism, the Duke of Norfolk."

The greatest writers work with the same 26 letters, good writing is just putting one word after another

Philip Roth by Zach Trenholm

Writing is putting one letter after another letter; one word after another; one sentence after another. As Margaret Atwood said:

"A word after a word after a word is power."

Christopher Hitchens - "Islamic fundamentalism is not created by American democracy"

Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie

Christopher Hitchens wrote in 2001 in The Nation magazine, 'Against Rationalization', a counter to Chomsky and the Left, who, in response to 9/11, suggested that the attacks against America were the causal effect of American action in the Middle East. He said:

"I know already that the people of Palestine and Iraq are victims of a depraved and callous Western statecraft."

For Christopher Hitchens, islamic grievance long pre-dates the Blair-Bush intervention. He said: