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03/22/09 - A NV Reader Admires Prof. MacDonald For His Courage

Re: James Fulford's Blog Happy Saint Patrick's Day

From: "Mike Maguire" <email him>

The problem with your anti-Irish writings is you're under the strange assumption the Irish are some johnny come latelies. The Irish contribution to America's founding is second to none. Eight signers of the Declaration were of Irish extraction and the troops who fought in the American Revolution were disproportionately Irish.

You also ignore the fact that nineteenth century Irish immigrants were victims of 700 years of English rape and plunder. Pin the blame for their condition where it belongs—England.

James Fulford replies: We get letters like this on a regular basis. There's no problem with my "anti-Irish" writings. I'm not actually anti-Irish, but if historical facts occasionally make Irish immigrants look bad, that's not my fault. And I'm afraid all of the historical claims above are wrong: 

• The Irish were mostly Johnny-come-latelies, arriving en masse at the time of the Famine, in the 1840s.
   
• Their contribution to America's founding was not "second to none." In Alien Nation, Peter Brimelow pointed out that "[I]n 1790 white Americans as a whole were 60 percent English, almost 80 percent British, 98 percent Protestant." See the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, pp.323,479.
   
• Of the signers of the Declaration, only Charles Carroll of Carrollton was an Irish Catholic, any other signers of "Irish extraction" would be what Americans call "Scotch-Irish" and the English call Ulstermen.
   
• As for the Irish being "disproportionately" represented in the troops of the American Revolution, they were also disproportionately represented in the British Army, (still are) and were even present among Loyalist troops raised by the British in Philadelphia.

None of which is to say that the Irish have been bad for America. There are lots of worse immigrant sending nations, and if the 1965 Immigration Act hadn't cut off a lot of the immigration from Europe, America would be reasonably happy to accept modern Irish immigrants. As it is, the majority of modern Irish immigrants are illegals.

As for the horrors of British colonialism, here's something an anonymous emailer wrote to John Derbyshire a while back:

"Paul Johnson's A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE has an appendix on 'Cromwell and Ireland' which puts Cromwell's actions in the context of their time. The last sentence is 'Finally, it is a curious fact that in 1651, when General Monck sacked Dundee, he killed as many people as Cromwell in Drogheda, and with far less military justification; yet the episode is rarely mentioned.' The Scots seem to have gotten on with their lives, inventing Political Economy, becoming Prime Ministers, and sparking the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, et cetera, rather than spending the last 350 years whining."