Andy Gilder wrote:I appreciate that changing the focus of the debate to fit your hobby horses is your modus operandi, but even by your standards that's a stretch. I can only assume you have sympathy with the causes and methods McGuinness and his like espouse?
Causes?
Yes. Just as I would imagine any democrat and progressive would.
Methods?
No.
No more than I have any sympathy for the methods of, say, the British military in blowing the heads off Iraqi children or raping Kenyan women. Or, for that matter, shooting dead a bunch of civilians on Bloody Sunday because someone had a panic.
But to look at some of the earlier contributions on this thread – not yours alone, but certainly yours included – one could be forgiven for imagining that only one side was culpable in the 800-odd years of the 'Irish problem'.
Having said that, let's check, shall we?
Andy Gilder wrote:There's nothing wrong with McGuinness that a speedboat packed with C4 wouldn't solve. Odious little terrorist sympathiser.
Yup. Only one side mentioned. And with your comment about "terrorist sympathiser", the implication the entire issue about what constitutes 'terrorism'.
Now I really don't do 'sins of the fathers' and all that stuff, whether it's in a religious sense or in a sense of grovelling about history. But that does not mean that the history is not there – or that, as in this case, that only one side shoulder historic blame or guilt for atrocities.