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Each June, a pot of shamrock mysteriously appears in the cemetery in the little Normandy churchyard of Toufreville. It is placed beside the grave of Private Edward Delaney O’Sullivan of the 22nd Independent (Pathfinder) Company of the British Parachute Regiment. When this Irish volunteer touched down outside the village after midnight on June 6th, 1945, he was part of the human vanguard of one of the greatest political and cultural advances in world history. At that moment, almost the entire […]

If you want to get a sense of the crisis faced by our world – the world of free speech and the rule of law, accountable politicians, transparent decision-making, responsible media and cultural self-confidence – you should read this week’s Spectator, specifically the articles by Lionel Shriver and Niall Ferguson. If they don’t make you reach for the gin, congratulations, you’re six feet under in Glasnevin and you probably didn’t even know you were dying. Our civilisation is under an […]

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. […]

For Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of the political wing of the IRA to have praised the man who in 1939 created the alliance between the IRA and the Third Reich can only mean one of four alternatives. One, she is profoundly stupid. Two, she is profoundly mad. Three, she is profoundly wicked. Four. There is no fourth alternative. But this is not the discussion that is now besetting the Irish media and political class. No, to the immense satisfaction […]

Take your pick. Which President Biden would you prefer? The one who fell three times getting up the steps into Air Force One? The one who referred to “President Harris”? Or the one who promised flight-suits for pregnant women in the armed forces? The deal of a lifetime! You get three for the price of one, and better still, at no extra cost, President Biden has promised to update military equipment to allow for servicewomen’s changing hairstyles. Wunderbar! Had this […]

Unanimous votes usually have a slight tang of “Our Beloved Leader” about them, so at best they should be treated with caution. Still, putting aside the common Irish desire to comply with the consensus – that most Beloved of all Leaders in Irish life – the unanimous vote within the Irish Commission on the Future of the Irish Media in support of Alan Rusbridger reminds us that feminism as a coherent movement in defence of women is dead. What it […]

I don’t want to write about this, mostly because you probably won’t want to read another bloody word about Covid, which is not exactly why I go to the trouble of… et cetera. But what precisely is going on when the only resistance to the insane rules now governing us come from the sort of people for whom the old padded-cells at Grangegorman should be re-opened and Albert Pierrepoint given his job back? Where is the voice of reason? Where […]