Holy Shamrocks Batman, That Is A Must Read Article..... Egan: Paul Ryans Irish Amnesia Timothy Egan: 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 Englands 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 Englands excuse for lethal negligence. You cant help noticing the deep historic irony that finds a Tea Party favorite and descendant of famine Irish using the same language that English Tories used to justify indifference to an epic tragedy. The Irish historian John Kelly, who wrote a book on the great famine, was the first to pick up on these echoes of the past during the 2012 presidential campaign. Ryans high-profile economic philosophy, he wrote then, is the very same one that hurt, not helped, his forebears during the famine -- and hurt them badly. FROM THE ARTICLE: What infuriated Mitchel was that the Irish were starving to death at the very time that rich stores of grain and fat livestock owned by absentee landlords were being shipped out of the country. The food was produced by Irish hands on Irish lands but would not go into Irish mouths, for fear that such charity would upset the free market, and make people lazy. Ryans running mate in 2012, Mitt Romney, made the Tory case with his infamous remark that 47 percent of Americans are moochers, dependent upon government. Part of that dependence, he said, extended to people who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. Food - the gall! You cant make these kinds of heartless remarks unless you think the poor deserve their fate -- that they have a character flaw, born of public assistance. And there hovers another awful haunt of Irish history. In 2012, Ryan said that the network of programs for the American poor made people not want to work. On Wednesday, he went further, using the language of racial coding. This, after he told a story of a boy who didnt want his free school lunch because it left him with a full stomach and an empty soul. The story was garbage -- almost completely untrue. I come from Irish peasants who came over during the potato famine, he said last year during a forum on immigration. What he should of added was..... And a mere three generations later, I am a priviledged fancy boy who has never held a real job yet, without a hint of irony, I consantly spout bootstrap metaphors that in no way mirror my own experience. I have shed and forgotten every last vestige of my recent ancestors struggles so completely that I claim to honestly believe that feeding hungry kids damages them. If I am not proof that the American Dream is real, who is? Ive had this Great Irish Famine debate with a number of Libertarians. yes, they arent kidding. They would have let the Irish starve. nytimes/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/paul-ryans-irish-amnesia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 17:29:24 +0000
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