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The only explanation still standing is that Irish nationalists are culturally addicted to high-stakes low-rewards risk-taking. How else to justify this feverish campaign to force through yet another border referendum? It cannot possibly result in a united Ireland, but it will raise northern nationalist expectations, which range from fever-pitched when moderate to homicidally hysterical when mildly agitated and raise unionist fears from ranting paranoid to berserker-axman. This addictive risk-taking is only made possible by another cyclical pathology, namely an utter […]

This piece first appeared in ‘The Catholic Herald’ in 2016 and is being re-published here at the request of readers and to mark the 105th anniversary of the April insurrection of 1916. Additions to the original piece are in italics. The Easter Rising in Dublin by the paramilitary Irish Volunteers, with the intention of overthrowing British rule in Ireland, failed every single test that would make any war moral. Firstly, no oppression existed that would have justified violence; indeed, the […]

It’s generally advisable to ignore the opinions of your enemies. But sometimes, one has to ignore the rules of common sense and give some publicity to your foe. I’m talking about Fintan O’Toole of The Irish Times. In a career that has for years been distinguished by its disingenuousness and the rank dishonesty of its argumentative rhetoric, he has seldom plumbed the depths that he did with his vilely dire column about Prince Philip this week, headlined “asylum-seeker and citizen […]

I have a pet theory. It is that the Californian zillionaires of the Silicocracy who control the world’s social media – in which I am a keen participant, thanks to my brace of tin-cans and a trusty length of string – have been experimenting to see how manipulable we are. Thus, for the past decade a few carefully chosen words have been deliberately spread through the mainstream media like barium in a meal, serving as markers of their cultural infiltration. […]