January 10th 1922 - Ireland's Geo.Washington - Arthur Griffith is elected

Why should we care? I'll tell you. Anyone worth their salt has read about the details of our beginnings, including the personality conflicts, and opinion differences of our Founding Fathers, and how they came to a peaceable common goal to bring Revolution to form a more perfect union. "The Real George Washington" is a book I highly recommend for that subject. Arthur Griffith did not serve long as The Irish Free-State President (later to grow into The Republic of Ireland.) He died from overwork...that's on his official certificate of death. Why he is worth mentioning is both what he accomplished prior, and how the Republic revolution played out compared to ours just as Pres.Griffith was dying. Arthur Griffith was the founder of Sinn Fein, a Republican political party which means "We Ourselves". He was among a group of Founding Fathers who put a vote out into the 36 counties in 1911 asking the Irish population if they chose independence, and if they were willing to fight for it. The results, of course, were overwhelming to overthrow the British, with a close vote only in the upper NE state known as Ulster. Still, it was only close, and not against the rest. We know Ulster these days as Northern Ireland. So began negotiations by Sinn Fein, which Griffith had already formed to represent such views in 1905. British snooty negotiations are notoriously slow, and WWI brought slow to a standstill. Thus, the notorious Easter Uprising of 1916 which is the hallmark of the Irish Revolution. Many of the original Forefathers were summarily executed by the British, with only a handful surviving by various odd circumstances. Griffith was arrested after the Uprising, even though he took no part in it. With the threat of Britain conscripting the Irish for WWI, Sinn Fein, holding a political majority, established an Irish Parliament, Dail Eireann, and quickly moved to declare Irish Independence. At this, of course, the British balked, which brought on the need for the Irish Volunteer Force in 1919, later to be known as the Irish Republican Army, or IRA. I ask why this group is on the US terrorist list, when their only target remains British occupying forces to this day in Northern Ireland? Thats a blog for another day. Our Revolutionary Army were certainly not liked by the British either, were they? Anyway, When it became clear over the two years of activity of the IRA that the British were beaten, not only on Irish soil, but on their own, if they didn't give Ireland independence, the Dail sent Eamon deValera to sign a peace accord, and gain a signature for the Independent Republic of Ireland's 32 counties. The British hadn't been beaten so badly since the American Revolution, and NEVER so quickly and completely. The signatures were certain. It was only a matter of a short trip. But. In 1920 President deValera went to the US to meet with President Wilson and get recognition for the Irish Republic. Wilson, being a huge Socialist Liberal Democrat may have never read about the origins of OUR country and what it takes. So, he had no mercy on deValera and the Irish people, and sent him packing. This may have had a horrible ripple effect through the next 90 years, because when Eamon de Valera walked into that meeting with the winning hand, that previous cut must have started to ache. He gave away Ulster, and the populace that voted for independence that still lives there. People mistake that for a Protestant - Catholic thing. rest assured, that is a British spin cover so that they don't have to take blame for being where they have no business. If they left...just packed up and left, peace would be automatic, and the Republic already has utilities in place to absorb Ulster into the union seamlessly. That's why we should care about Arthur Griffith. Not all revolutions go like ours. We were blessed. Other countries accepted our independence...not like Wilson did to the Irish. By the way...there were 10 million Irish in 1840. By the time the British had burned out, murdered, and pursued the mass population to the small portion of the southwest corner of the island, the Plague had engulfed Europe, and the food shortage was starving millions. THAT is the key to what the British want with Ireland. No one in Europe wanted potatoes, they were considered poison and at best tasteless and poor people food...so as the British troops burned, murdered, and pursued the population, they loaded ships with every scrap of Irish food and took all to England. History writes that the potato famine forced the Irish to the US in the 1840's. There's a little truth in every lie. The Irish were only allowed to eat potatoes...the rest of the food was shipped to England.  History leaves that out. After the British designed "potato famine" 5 million Irish were gone. That's called genocide, and when Hitler did it to 10million Jews they got a country. History writes the number at 2.5 million and true, many ran off to other countries, but they were refugees from the British policy, not the potato famine. And the true number is 5 million. Now...the whole point of this piece today? It's the history that we DON'T know that is important, to verify, and put into perspective the history that we THINK we know. When WE have made ripples in our historical waters...really every day, good, or bad, big, or small...who writes the changes in? That's what makes me write. Genocide is not a little two year potato famine. A two and-a-half year financial struggle for Social Security Disability is not just "red tape." It is two denials by two different self-righteous beaurocrats who never laid an eye on me during a puking blind migraine, or hemaplegic migraine attack, or at any time actually. Will these beaurocrats continue on my tax money, being paid year after year, only to retire with nice health benefits and a 401k? Or will they come up missing never to be found, and with no clues? History is a funny thing, and how it is written, and who gets to write it. It's too bad Arthur Griffith didn't get the chance to get those signatures instead of de Valera. How much more peaceful would a 36 county Irish Republic be.