To be Irish or not to be Irish...

that is an interisting question, which I have opinions concerning but they do take a lot of explanation

Guinness. Obviously. With a few whiskey chasers.

Something we can agree on.
Guinness is good for one thing, a stew!
Sure it's a protestant drink!

my personal opinions on who should qualify as Irish are inclusive BY DEFAULT, however there are a large number of things that specifically exclude someone

My ideas on this score have been all over the place down the years. I'll try to describe where I've arrived.

Basically my ideal for Ireland is that of Pearse: "Not free merely, but Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely, but free as well." By free I mean sovereign. Whether that involves a single nation state or a confederation is a separate matter. I like the idea of a confederation, having a general bias towards devolution and localism.

I think "Gaelic" is more important than "free". If some genie in a lamp gave me the choice of an Irish-speaking Ireland that was part of the UK, I would say "Yes". I don't really see much value in a sovereign state when the nation is almost entirely indistinguishable from Anglo-American culture. I have no hostility towards anglo-American culture, quite the opposite. I would feel the same about any other culture.

Nevertheless I think we must distinguish between an ideal Ireland and the real Ireland. I think we have to love both. Some of my conservative friends have now essentially disowned their Irishness after the abortion referendum and all the other body-blows to Ireland as we knew it. But I think a nation is like a family and you don't get that option.

I share Dev's vision of "the Ireland that dreamed of", but ultimately I think true patriotism has to embrace all our compatriots. I have to love Fintan O'Toole and Ivana Bacik and Mary McAleese as fellow Irish men and Irish women.

So, ultimately, and risking a pelting from the peanut gallery, I think I would accept anyone who considers themselves Irish as Irish. Whether they just moved her or whether they are fifth-generation Irish-Americans in Canada or Australia or anywhere else. Or, indeed, even if it's someone like Micheál Mac Liammóir who just decides they're Irish for whatever sentimental reason.

So while I will continue to argue for the ideal of a Gaelic Ireland, which I accept involves a certain amount of creative reinterpretation of the past, I accept that other people have different visions of Irishness. After all, I don't think there was ever really a consensus on this, even in the GPO on Easter Week, or in the First Dáil, or anywhere else.

People argue endlessly about what defines a nation-- whether it's climate, ancestry, history, language, religion, culture, etc. etc. But I don't think any definitive formula can be found. It's like arguing about the definition of poetry or humour or friendship. Everybody knows what such things are, in some way, but they are endlessly elusive to define. I think all those elements above, and more, go into the mix. Which ones we want to emphasise is another question.

My personal test for what should be championed as a feature of Irishness is: Is it distinctive? For instance, the Irish language is distinctive, GAA games are distinctive, red lemonade is distinctive, Cork or Dublin slang is distinctive.

Tolerance and diversity and things like that are not distinctive. They can be found anywhere. They may be good or bad, given the circumstances, but they can't be held up as defining features of Irishness. The same goes for multiculturalism. As Antaine said in another thread, there's nothing distinctively Irish about being "mixed", since every Western country is mixed.

I once made this point to a friend and he pointed out that the PARTICULAR MIX of ethnicities might be distinctive. I guess that's true, but it still seems a rather dull sort of distinctiveness to be, just a matter of differing percentages.

Just my thoughts. I might bore you all by waxing lyrical on my own personal vision of Irishness in a future post on this thread.