Ulster, Division, and the Vintage of Violence

This Tuesday, a tradition known as the Orange March will commence in Ulster.

This is a tradition which has existed for over 300 years, commemorating the Battle of the Boyne where Ulsterists fought and won over the Catholic James II, thus enshrining the House of Orange’s victory during the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and cementing the Protestant ascendancy fought for by people such as Oliver Cromwell.

Of course, there’s a parallel here to current events.

Irish hatred for the English is an old vintage, going back 800 years and still stirring in the northeastern part of Ireland.  First it was the Normans, who were successfully resisted.  In 1500, much of Ireland was covered in oak forest… until Henry VIII decided to invade Ireland and claim it for his own.  By 1588, the English cut the oaks down for ships to fight the Spanish Armada, washing away much of the topsoil.  Irish forms of governance recognizable to any New England town hall were replaced with lord, land, and title… driving many Irish to poverty and destitution.

The Irish have experienced genocide at the hands of Cromwell under the Ulster Plantations in the 17th century, sold as slaves to Virginia and the Caribbean and later to places such as Australia throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, crushed by British soldiers when Ireland demanded the freedoms of old in 1798, starved out during the Great Famine to the point where the population of Ireland never recovered in 1848, brutalized with first police then paramilitary forces during the Irish War for Independence in the early 20th century, partitioned and cut off, and then turned Irish Catholics into a second-class citizenry under a Protestant minority whose socioeconomic effects are still dramatically felt to this day.

800 years.

The Great Famine alone is worth discussing in detail.  Before the famine, 6.5 million Irish lived on the island.  After the famine, the British Empire shipped away tons of grain while Ireland’s population starved.  One million Irishmen died, one million emigrated away.  By 1911, just over 3 million Irish lived in Ireland proper.  By 1961?  2.8 million.

Today’s population?  4.5 million.  That was the impact of the British policy towards Ireland.

Today’s climate in the United States regarding race relations is a sensitive subject indeed.  Special attention is called in special cases, to be sure.

There are many ethnicities — many races — that have experienced trials, and still experience trials.  One is hard pressed to find a current example here in the United States comparable to the Orange Order marching down the street of any ethnic minority here in the United States.  Simply put, they don’t exist.

Thankfully, the tradition of marching down Catholic nationalist neighborhoods is dying out, as the four most violent and controversial Orange Marches have been banned just this year.  The call for forcing the marches through anyway was strong… but not strong enough in a post-Brexit world.

The larger perspective in all of this is that for as much as we may agitate for change, there are other ethnicities and races that have experience different and sometimes far worse tragedies — one can think of the Native American experience here in the United States, and few people are marching for justice on their behalf.

Compassion — as has been noted by Mr. Schoeneman — is a critical factor in the human framework.  Understanding “the other” is critical as well, and before we reach for what other thinkers have called (and rightly) “Machiavelli for short attention spans” it is far more worthwhile to understand that we all carry tremendous backgrounds, born of both privilege (whatever that word means) and disadvantage.

As noted back in December 2014 in the aftermath of the brutal execution of two NYPD police officers:

Alinskyite tactics, whether they seek to defend black communities or look to address police violence (or both), are doomed to failure because they view humanity in the lens of materialism.   The cause of human freedom — if it is worth defending as [Polish] Solidarity has shown us — deserves more than Machiavelli for short attention spans.

Of course, the riposte to this would be that Irish Catholic communities tried peaceful non-violence and it got them nowhere… that 1998’s Good Friday was predicated on violence and a right to self-defense.  One admits the latter, yet I find it difficult if not impossible to consent to the former — not when the Orange Marches are still ongoing and police brutality was an inherent feature of Ulster rule.

When events in the United States reach the degree of division we see in northern Ireland, then let’s talk.  Until then… let’s talk.

If it is to be admitted that the 400-year black experience in America has no parallel, then there are 40 million Americans of Irish descent who by right could adopt that logic in toto with an 800-year counterexample — and a far longer and more violent tradition of hatred, division, and repression that in some instances are similar… and in others, most certainly not.

I draw no other conclusions other than to raise some comparisons and place them alongside your thoughts for awhile, paraphrasing the libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick.  Yet it is worth considering, as we discuss the Black Lives Matter movement, that there are other movements and histories worth considering and recognizing as well.  That as a common humanity, we are far better off as a tapestry rather than a patchwork quilt.

Complex thought, and hopefully it’s taken with the degree of empathy plus thoughtfulness I am trying to communicate.  I hope so.