Also, they wanted to start shooting at each other almost
immediately after the English left.


Donal wrote:
That is very true.....

You probably know as much about this as I do. I suspect that this was
censored from my early education.


Nobody learns an honest history of their own country, at
least, not the first time around. In some ways this is good,
maybe if we weren't stuffed with romantic myths at an early
age, then nobody would be loyal to anything.



One of the things I admire about the Irish people is that
very few of them seem bitter about the past... and that
seems to have been the case even before the current era of
prosperity.


I base this on a personal observation, only about a dozen
people I talked to and perhaps a hundred that I observed.

In particular, I had several fairly long discussions with an
old harbor pilot and a couple of older sailors (in the
Kinsale & Cobh areas).



My gut feeling is that there was always a connection to prosperity.


For many people... perhaps most... yes of course. The
average person would rather raise a family is peace than go
around throwing bombs, or even recruiting suicide bombers.



My younger brother, who is only four years younger than I am, has always
felt that Northern Ireland would be too expensive to control.

My feelings were much more nationalistic. I had a romantic dream about a
united Ireland.

I believe that our differences can be explained by the different education
that we received.


Sure. Not just education but also the differing attitudes of
one's peer group at an early age. For example, when I was a
kid, people around here talked about what their
great-grand-daddies did in the Civil War, sort of like the
way baby boomer still talk about the Nixon/Viet Nam era. To
younger people, both topics are a total blank. Many know a
little about the subject but it's a null issue, emotionally.

DSK