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You seem to have neglected the relatives in modern times bit. And honestly, I don’t see how you could be proud of a flag that has flown over the largest number of atrocities the world has ever seen.</p>
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And what neighborhoods of what cities? You’ll find unionist areas, republican areas, and largely indifferent areas. If you really think that there isn’t a large republican presence, then you’re very misinformed.</p>
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<p>Then you are woefully ignorant of history. Here are a few of the differences:</p>
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<li>The US wasn’t involved in Vietnam for anything like 300 years.</li>
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<p>*The US did not try to stamp out the Vietnamese language. The English made a concerted effort to ban Irish as a language. It’s never fully recovered. Heck, the English even changed Irish surnames–Wheeler, Ryder, Smith, and many others which many Irish have are the English versions of Irish names which the English imposed on the Irish. No Vietnamese people were imprisoned or executed for speaking Vietnamese. LOTS of Irish were imprisoned or executed for speaking Irish. </p>
<p>*The US did not try to convert the Vietnamese to a state religion. It was a crime to practice the Catholic faith for most of the time Engand ruled Ireland. Thanks to the Brits, I cannot trace my ancestry more than a couple of generations because there are no written records of Catholic marriages or baptisms. They were not written down because if they were and were found, the folks involved would be put to death. Although officially the “penal” laws ended about 1790, in most of Ireland they existed in practice long after that. (The earliest baptismal records from the parish where my paternal ancestors lived date from 1836. )</p>
<p>Among other things, English did not recognize Catholic marriages as valid. Unless you were married in the Church of Ireland, your children were deemed illegitimate under English law and could not inherit your property. For example, English shipped a lot of Irish to Australia as convicts. Even there, where the prisoners who stayed on were better able to practice their religion than in Ireland itself, the censuses, taken by the British, show most Irish-surnamed males having “concubines.” These were in fact their WIVES, whome they married in the Catholic Church. </p>
<p>*Americans did not try to keep the Vietnamese ignorant. Until the 1840s, most Irish were not given any opportunity to go to school. The first school Catholics could attend in my paternal ancestors’ area opened in 1843. It was a windowless mud hut. </p>
<p>*The Potato Famine was one of the worst genocides in history. There was not a shortage of any other kind of food and Ireland continued to export food to England throughout the famine. In a space of about a decade, the population of Ireland was reduced by half. The population of Catholics was reduced by more than that–some estimates are that as much as two -thirds of Catholics died or emigrated. </p>
<p>*Cromwell paid his troops with land belonging to the Irish. </p>
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<li>The Brits engaged in a concerted effort to reduce the population of Ireland. The “coffin ships” in which they sailed were as bad as the ships used for slavery. Indeed, when England outlawed the slave trade, some of the slavers were used to transport the Irish. When the first ship of famine refugees arrived in NYC, almost all those aboard were so sick they had to be taken immediately to hospital. The US government stepped in and demanded certain minimal conditions for the ships–including adequate food. </li>
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<p>The result was that most of the ships went to British North America instead. The death counts aboard the ships were appalling. To spare having to bury the dead, the Brits threw them overboard just before landing. A bill was introduced in the House of Commons which would have required the Irish ships to meet the conditions of transport set for prison ships to Australia. The bill was defeated. </p>
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<p>The Guilford Four’s sham conviction wasn’t “centuries” ago! Nor was Bobby Sands’ death. The Guilford Four were kept in prison long after everyone high up in the judicial system knew full well they weren’t members of the IRA and hadn’t been involved in the bombing. They got out of prison about 1990…Is that “centuries” ago? </p>
<p>Additionally, ordinary Catholics were discriminated against in Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland, right up to and including the 1980s, Catholics were discriminated against in education and hiring. Heck, a British newspaper did an expose showing that a Protestant male with an 8th grade education had better job prospects than a Catholic with a college degree. I know someone who came to the US from Northern Ireland when she was in her late 20s in the 1960s because she got turned down for job after job. She grew up in a state orphanage and felt tremendous loyalty to the Queen, believe it or not. She wanted nothing to do with the Republic until she tried to get a decent job and decent housing and discovered how much the deck was stacked against her because she was Catholic. She then came to the US and gave every spare penny she had to Noraid. </p>
<p>It also wasn’t “centuries ago” that Churchill called the Irish “A nation of cowards,” that Princess Margaret opined “the Irish are pigs.”</p>
<p>Do I hate the English? No, of course not. Most English aren’t personally responsible for official action. But lets not deny that Catholics were treated as second class citizens in Northern Ireland until very recently and that the whole “problem” was created by the fact that when the Ireland was partitioned, the Brits took two counties which were majority Catholic-which everyone knew would lead to endless warfare.</p>