Reply to a comment  Reply to this comment  pdf#397537 writes:
in response to fartknocker:  Gadfly fixed that for you. Simply
put, Irish Republicans are by geography historically Catholic,
while Unionists are historically Protestant. The few that caused
the misery during the troubles were those who were absolutely
militant about being part of the Republic of Ireland or being a
part of the Union. A few years ago Northern Ireland was given
the vote to separate from the union, and voted almost
unilaterally to remain in the union.  This is very often the
case in any religious/cultural conflicts. People fight over
differences. Whenever a "we" vs. "they" mentality develops,
people start to imagine differences that don't exist and over-
generalize differences that do. In the US it is "Southern" vs.
"Northern", "rich" vs. "poor", "Republican" vs. "Democrat". We
saw in the last election here in these very letters how
political party affiliation was generalized to all sorts of
stereotypes: Republicans as either greedy w