U.S. to weigh in as post-brexit row threatens N. Ireland peace

[Cosmo Blues]

U.S. to weigh in as post-Brexit row threatens Northern Ireland peace https://www.cbsnews.com/news/northern-ireland-good-friday-agreement-brexit-uk-us-biden/

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. I keep on thinking that Brexit may result in a united Ireland. Although

I'm not sure what the correct term might be. "A Nation Once Again" is, I believe, the title of a song about this.

[NotANeocon]

3. Indeed there is a song

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. Here are the lyrics:

When boyhood's fire was in my blood
I read of ancient freemen,
For Greece and Rome who bravely stood,
Three hundred men and three men;
And then I prayed I yet might see
Our fetters rent in twain,
And Ireland, long a province, be.
A Nation once again!

A Nation once again,
A Nation once again,
And lreland, long a province, be
A Nation once again!

So, as I grew from boy to man,
I bent me to that bidding
My spirit of each selfish plan
And cruel passion ridding;
For, thus I hoped some day to aid,
Oh, can such hope be vain ?
When my dear country shall be made
A Nation once again!

A Nation once again,
A Nation once again,
And lreland, long a province, be
A Nation once again!

[NotANeocon]

2. Just give Ireland back to the Irish

and don't start another unnecessary war. Keep out of things that don't concern you and STFU.

[Sgent]

4. The problem is

the RoI doesn't want it as is, and the majority (slightly) of the people living in N Ireland would vote to remain part of the UK -- and are willing to start a terrorist campaign over it.

Its not an easy issue.

[NotANeocon]

6. Things have changed considerably over the last 20 years.

And the 6 counties are no longer as well gerrymandered as they once were. Furthermore belonging to the EU has definite monetary gains for the majority and money talks.

I suspect they are a lot closer to actual unity than 22 and less likely to start another civil war.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. My first trip to Ireland was in 1972.

I stayed at a B&B in Dublin. One of my fellow lodgers was a commercial traveler, a businessman traveling for his business. If I recall correctly, he owned several movie theaters in some other part of the country.

We became friendly, and one day he took me downtown to the GPO, the General Post Office, the site of the Easter Uprising in 1916. He told me all about it, and I would have sworn it had happened only a few years earlier, rather than more than half a century before.

For what it's worth, I'm 100% Irish. All four grandparents came from Ireland at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. When I was a little girl, the elderly aunts would all look at me and say (please imagine an Irish brogue here), "Ahhh, she has the map of Ireland on her face." Well, I grew up in this country, and even if we are only talking white people, there's a good amount of variety of appearance, let alone all of the other wonderful ethnicities and country of origin.

My parents' generation all married fellow Irish Americans. On that first trip to Ireland I was flabbergasted to see that every single person I saw looked EXACTLY like my brothers and my sisters and my cousins. Wow.

[NotANeocon]

8. When I was a whelp Dublin had a few "foreign" students in Trinity or UCD

They were the only brown or black faces you would see - perhaps 1 per week.

Joining the EU changed all that and Liffeyside is nearly cosmopolitan today. They do speak a language that the stranger does not know but it isn't Gaelic.

[pecosbob]

9. At least this time the U.S. President won't be advocating the privatization of the NHS

as part of the negotiation.

[roamer65]

10. Northern Ireland, then Scotland.

The UK’s days are numbered.