Paul Ryan’s Irish Amnesia

[Scuba]

I disagree with the author that "There is no comparison, of course, between the de facto genocide that resulted from British policy, and conservative criticism of modern American poverty programs."


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/paul-ryans-irish-amnesia.html

A great debate raged in London: Would it be wrong to feed the starving Irish with free food, thereby setting up a “culture of dependency”? Certainly England’s man in charge of easing the famine, Sir Charles Trevelyan, thought so. “Dependence on charity,” he declared, “is not to be made an agreeable mode of life.”

And there I ran into Paul Ryan. His great-great-grandfather had fled to America. But the Republican congressman was very much in evidence, wagging his finger at the famished. His oft-stated “culture of dependency” is a safety net that becomes a lazy-day hammock. But it was also England’s excuse for lethal negligence.
...

Ryan boasts of the Gaelic half of his ancestry, on his father’s side. “I come from Irish peasants who came over during the potato famine,” he said last year during a forum on immigration.

BUT with a head still stuffed with college-boy mush from Ayn Rand, he apparently never did any reading about the times that prompted his ancestors to sail away from the suffering sod. Centuries of British rule that attempted to strip the Irish of their language, their religion and their land had produced a wretched peasant class, subsisting on potatoes. When blight wiped out the potatoes, at least a million Irish died — one in eight people.

[hobbit709]

1. Ryan epitomizes the R attitude. "I got mine and screw you."

[pinto]

2. Good read. Thanks for the snag.

[Starry Messenger]

3. K&R

[treestar]

4. Gee it would be so much worse to eat charity food

than to starve to death!

And one free charitable meal is going to make you dependent for life, of course.

and the fact they got to that point was their own fault. Had they just worked harder!

[Gothmog]

5. Ryan is an overrated idiot

I really do not understand why he is considered to be intelligent

[Scuba]

6. Could it be that he's constantly propped up by the "liberal media"?

[Enthusiast]

12. Good observation.

That damn liberal media!

[FSogol]

7. I'm currently reading, "The Graves are Walking" by John Kelly about the famine. It is scary

how the British attitudes exactly match tea party/Republican sentiments today. Some of the quotes and articles could have been at home in 1847 or 2014.

Paul Ryan is scum.

[whathehell]

8. You might want to try "Paddy's Lament" as well..

..chilling and heartrending.

[FSogol]

10. The best one on the subject is "The Great Shame" by Thomas Keneally (author of Schlinder's List)

Thanks for the recommendation.

[Enthusiast]

13. They are following the same playbook. It's a tried and true method.

I read Trinity by Leon Uris. I got much the same sense that you did from "The Graves are Walking" by John Kelly.

[hfojvt]

9. there's an error there

The potato, introduced from America, allowed the Irish population to explode. From about 4 million in 1780 to over 8 million by 1840, and that was even WITH a large outmigration of the Irish. My own Irish ancestors left Ireland in the 1830s. Patrick Brady, for example, became a citizen in 1837 after five years of residency.

Whether those poor potato farmers were "wretched peasants" is another question. I have read that potato farming is some of the easiest agricultural work in the world.

Of course, they became wretched in pretty short order when their crops failed.

http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/past/famine/demographics_pre.html

"In fact, there had been mass emigration from Ireland long before the famine. In this period, the Irish accounted for a third of all voluntary traffic across the Atlantic. These emigrants were mainly from Ulster and Leinster, with fewer coming from the poorer areas of Connaught and Munster.

Between 1815 and 1845, 1.5 million Irish emigrated, mainly to Britain (c0.5 million) and to north America (c1 million). Of those who went to north America, the majority settled in Canada. Between 1825 and 1830, 128,200 Irish emigrated to north America, 61% of which went to Canada and 39% to the USA. In the decade 1831 to 1840, 437,800 Irish emigrated (almost double the number of the previous decade). Of these, 60% went to Canada and 39% to the USA. "

[Paladin]

11. Great article, thanks for posting.

This is the sort of blatant hypocrisy that ought to follow Ryan around for as long as possible. Nasty little zombie-eyed, granny starver. (Thanks again, Charley Pierce.)