Reader submitted content. Story by Pat Hickey, published with permission by John Kass News.
The Irish national epic is Tain Bo Cualigne (The Cattle Raid of Cooley). It’s a long poem about the greed and vanity of elites and the courage and honor of those who are bound to fight for them. The king and queen of Connaught own a white horned bull and want to match it with the legendary Brown Bull of Ulster. At first, they attempt to finagle the brown bull of Cualigne (Cooley) and then outright steal it.
The prose/poem is a litany of lies, deceptions, curses, blood and misery. Note again that this work is the national Irish epic.
Heroes die by the hundreds and deeds of valor abound, bolstered by mighty oaths.
The bulls are brought together, and they slaughter one another. Very much ado and all for nothing.
I grew up with Irish literature and history. My grandparents escaped the misery of late 19th century County Kerry and settled for the glories of Chicago’s stockyards. From there they built solidly middle-class lives in the land of the free and home of the brave. Their children and grandchildren inherited the privileges of American citizenship, while enjoying a connection to our romantic Celtic past. Ireland was the land of saints, scholars, poets, rebels and martyrs.
I visited Ireland a few times and came away with a much greater love for America. I look at Ireland today and am sad.
Ireland, or rather the Irish, have seemed to disappear. The Woke would say that the Irish have evolved. Me? I say they’ve evolved into voiceless, timid and complacent beneficiaries of a soulless culture.
Sure, there is Guinness and Father Ted and GAA hurling and football and Craic, but the faith of our fathers has vanished.
Pope John Paul II, now a Saint, visited Ireland in 1979 and praised the nation for its faithfulness. At that time 90% of the population identified as Roman Catholic and 87% of that demographic attended services. In 2022, 69% identified as Catholic and only 40% of those attended services. The next largest group after Catholic is “no religion” at 14%.
Ireland is now secular, globally Woke, passive and controlled by the European Union (EU) and Silicon Valley.
This past spring, Ireland ordered that 200,000 head of cattle be killed in order to curb bovine flatulence that is allegedly causing the planet’s destruction. Dairy products are Ireland’s principle exports – think Kerry Gold.
Ireland has been constitutionally neutral since the birth of the Republic, under the arch-Catholic Eamon De Valera. Today, the EU wants to put an end to Irish neutrality and is pushing to add Ireland to NATO.
Ireland is enthralled to Silicon Valley and the global elites of the EU. Angela Nagel, a brilliant public scholar and an American-born Irish writer, has become a target of the Woke. Her book Kill All the Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumbler to Trump and the Alt-Right caused a Leftist Woke backlash that continues today. There was no MAGA or right-wing rage against Ms. Nagle.
In 2020, the brilliant Ms. Nagle wrote this assessment of Irish Wokeism:
Having uncritically adopted the fashions of American academia, Ireland’s new young, educated elite have started parroting the imported language of “white privilege” versus “people of colour,” and the dangers of nationalism versus the superior multinational capitalism-friendly values of openness.
There is little reason to think the cultural revolution sweeping across Europe from America will stop and listen to the “but we’re on your side!” pleas offered by Irish Republicans about how they supported the anti-apartheid movement in the Eighties or how our nationalist heroes were anti-imperialists or that our Republicans today are economically left-leaning and pro-immigration.
Anyone who thinks these details will matter, and that any remnant of Irish cultural nationhood will be immune, is simply not paying attention to the unstoppable internal logic of the current cultural revolution underway. This new generation of elite aspirants are already showing that they make no such distinction and simply recast the native Irish as “white people” whose privilege needs to be checked and ultimately dismantled.
What has happened to Ireland? It has been bought off. The people of Ireland serve cruel masters. No, not Perfidious Albion, the British Crown, but the global elites of the EU and Silicon Valley. Why? Tax breaks. Miss Nagel notes,
As a result of the low-tax policies introduced in the late Nineties, Ireland today is effectively a tax haven, hosting the European headquarters of Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and many others. Some of these companies have been found to be paying as little as 0.005% tax. While this project gave Ireland the Celtic Tiger economy, it also produced a deeply unequal society totally subservient to the sovereignty and ultimately the values and culture of the corporations who today are its guiding force. For our obedience, we received surely the lowest of honours just last year when anti-yellow vests French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy congratulated us for being a people who resist the winds of populism (emphases my own).
Populism is Woke dog-whistle for fascist, or MAGA, or right-wing extremist. Any sobriquet to tamp down free speech. If you are a devout Catholic, oppose abortion, demand secure borders due to Ireland’s unrestricted immigration policies, and want to end identity politics whereby any identification but that of Irish has a free hand, then you are deemed a far-right national populist. One group has drawn the collective ire of EU elites: Niall McConnell’s Irish Patriot organization.
Angela Nagel warned that Ireland is as much subjugated by the Woke overlords of the EU and Silicon Valley as it was under British Rule. She writes,
The revolutionary generation that gave us the Irish nation understood that you cannot be culturally, intellectually or economically self-directed if you’re ruled from a foreign power. These recent events have started to reveal the irreconcilable and contradictory nature of the official ideology of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, which tried to dress our colonial relationship to international capitalism as a national triumph. The Irish will soon learn that if your economy is ruled from California, your society will start to look like California, a nowhere of the very rich and very poor, but without the sunshine.
Remember this: It was an Irish Chieftain who invited the Normans under Henry II to help him retain some power. Dermot McMurrough became a willing vassal of the Earl of Pembroke and the Plantagenet kings. It was Irish bishops that backed the play of Pope Adrian (an Englishman named Nicholas Breakspeare) and handed the Irish Church over to the British kings.
Likewise, the two major Irish political parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, struck the deal with Mammon and brought about the Celtic Tiger of the 1990s. Ireland is now a sad European Union petty state. While it has a mighty history of martyrdom, rebellion and faith, it also holds a miserable record of self-deception and outright betrayal.
The Irish people have a long and honored tradition of speaking truth to power. Jonathan Swift, Theobald Wolf Tone, Robert Emmet, Edmund Burke, Daniel O’Connell, James Connolly, James Larkin, Constance Georgine Markievicz, Protestants and Catholics alike, loudly shouted at oppressive policies and attitudes. Precious few voices are heard calling for change these days. The Irish media is as co-opted as the American corporate media. People like Angela Nagle are “cancelled.”
The Irish have sewn their mouths shut. The two bulls of Ireland are gored and dying, yet again.
Thank you for printing my article.
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