Angry in the Great White North

From Martin Sheen's speech:

It’s about time I showed up! (Unintelligible remark about the President of the United States.) I don’t need to tell you how many people are watching what’s happening here on this, what can only be called sacred ground. All over the country, people are watching, there’s a great thaw, there’s a great thaw! And many of -- many of us who have been silent far too long have begun to get behind these women being led by Cindy Sheehan. So, so very proud to be here and so, so grateful to all of you for standing with her for vigiling. It is in the old Irish Tradition that goes back centuries that when you had a rift with the landlord or an authority, you vigiled in front of their homes until they came out and confronted you. And that’s what this is all about in that that great tradition.

Now I turn the floor over to Ralph C.P. Gatrone, Class of 05, Graduate Student, Virginia State University:

My BA is in History, with my course and research focus in Military and Irish areas. I'm a shiny new graduate thereof (Class of '05), now a MA candidate at Virginia State (focusing research here on Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Africa, oddly enough).

In Ireland during the notable times of trouble between landowners and tenants, there was no way to address problems. If a family sat around in front of their landlords house in protest during, say, 1847, something very simple would have happened when somebody came out to confront them. The Royal Irish Constabulary or some of the landowner's own men would show up, beat the tar out of the family, and physically throw them off the land. And this wouldn't even be the landlord since most landlords could not readily come out and "confront" anybody. Most landlords in Ireland were "absentee landlords" and didn't even live in Ireland.

I refer here to the Great Famine 'cause odds are that's what Sheen is refering to (the odds of such a learned person knowing about other issues in Irish History besides the Famine and 1916 are slim). See, the agents of the landlords dealt with problems with tenants very simply. They evicted them. If they needed tenants, somebody else would take their place. If they stuck around their old house, the landlord's agents burned it. Ireland for most of history was a place were problem people were dealt with either by transporation (Australia) or a rope.

One poster mentioned "boycott", which was used in Ireland in 1880 (against a Captain Boycott, an eviction agent). But it's different from what Sheen mentioned. Nobody held a vigil on the estate that employed Boycott, people just simply refused to associate with him in any form.

Basically, I don't think Sheen knows what he's talking about.

Well, Ralph, maybe Martin Sheen (aka Ramon Estevez) can trump your degree with one of his own. After all, his character on "The West Wing" is supposed to be a Nobel Prize winner in economics:

[Martin Sheen] purposely flunked his college entrance exam to the University of Dayton so that he could pursue an acting career instead. His father wholeheartedly disapproved until he had gained popular success, not even seeing Martin act until he saw him on the screen at a drive-in in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio.

Never mind.

[Michelle Malkin has a round-up of Camp Casey stuff.]