How the Irish Destroyed Civilization

“Thus, to avoid giving the Irish their rights, reactionary Britishers helped to foment a war that, together with a second war spawned by this first one, effectively ended the British empire of which these people were so inordinately proud.” Sanford Rose

Dolors & Sense

By Sanford Rose

KISSIMMEE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—5/13/2013—And you thought, following Thomas Cahill’s 1996 book, that they saved it.

Well, they did, to a certain extent, by preserving Latin literature in the Dark Ages. But, like the west wind, they are both destroyer and preserver.

I’m not talking so much about what the Irish did. I’m talking primarily about what happened because, to coin a phrase (or a paraphrase), they were there.

Think back to the year 1914, the eve of the Great War. Why did Britain enter that conflict, thereby guaranteeing that it would be both global and protracted?

There are lots of reasons, most often mentioned being a fear of Germany—based not on what it had done but rather on what it might do in the future.

Yet another major, though rarely discussed, reason is that entry into the conflict provided a way of disposing of the army, which became the British Expeditionary Force in France.

And the army had to be disposed of because, if it hadn’t been sent to France, it would have been available for deployment in Ireland.

And had it been available, it certainly would have been needed to keep the peace between Ulstermen and southern Irish. These two groups were on the verge of civil war over the Irish Home Rule legislation slated for passage by parliament.

Without an army to deploy, parliament could not pass Irish Home Rule.

So the anti-Irish Tories (including a number of  key Ulstermen professional soldiers), who called themselves Unionists, were quick to ally with some imperialist Liberals in plunking for a European war.

They got it. Irish Home Rule was thereupon shelved for the war’s duration (indeed, it was six years before the Irish got self-government).

Thus, to avoid giving the Irish their rights, reactionary Britishers helped to foment a war that, together with a second war spawned by this first one, effectively ended the British empire of which these people were so inordinately proud.

True, these wars and their sequelae did not actually destroy civilization. But, then again, the Irish monks did not actually preserve it a thousand years earlier.