I am an American. My pedigree is about half Irish, half Italian, and once upon a time ago my Irish family was kicked from French royalty by Napoleon, who were then kicked right out from England because they were Catholic in a Protestant country.

Nationality, to me, means nothing other than a label for you to identify yourself with a larger group. What makes you different from others is from who you come. America was, for a great deal of recent history, “the new world.” Americans, at least those who do not descend from Native Americans, lived from cultures imported from other countries along with the people who immigrated there. In America, we have the privilege of having the chance to experience other cultures by going to a different state, town, or even just down the street to go where people of a different culture chose to congregate.

Compared to America, Ireland wasn’t exactly a hot topic. Ireland’s major neighbors were sailing Scandinavians and the English Empire, and the Vikings who went to Ireland became Irish. They are surrounded with their own culture, and the only other culture they’re accustomed to are the English, who they’ve been fighting for ages because an English King changed their culture to make it his own. The Irish culture is bound to the boundaries of the island, which also happens to be the boundaries of the nation, so the Irish idea of nationality is also their culture, and I think they view a changes to their culture as an aggression to their nation.

It’s far too easy to say the Irish are nationalist. I think it’s more apt to say the Irish enjoy being Irish.