Greatest country in the world

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I don't know why American right-wingers continue to reflexively love a country that has rampant abortion (that alone makes me despise the modern US) and spends an ungodly amount on hand outs and "humanitarian intervention" and all that other garbage. I have more respect for pre-downturn Ireland or Liechtenstein or one of the "asian tigers" or something like that.

Pre-Downturn Ireland was a ridiculous place. It has much more serious problems now of course, but I really hope that it never was the best country in the world or close. Liechtenstein and the Asian Tigers? LOL no.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I don't know why American right-wingers continue to reflexively love a country that has rampant abortion (that alone makes me despise the modern US) and spends an ungodly amount on hand outs and "humanitarian intervention" and all that other garbage. I have more respect for pre-downturn Ireland or Liechtenstein or one of the "asian tigers" or something like that.

Pre-downturn Ireland was, as the left in Ireland has started pointing out, voluntarily sacrificing its sociocultural framework by inches on the altar of profit, which is why the downturn happened. Then if you go further back you find that that sociocultural framework was itself Inksed-up in many ways. I love Ireland but it's not a country that seems to really admit of having 'golden ages'. Unless you go back to Brian Boru.

The left (whoever they are) have hardly "started" to point that out. And by the way, despite the downturn, it is still doing that.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I don't know why American right-wingers continue to reflexively love a country that has rampant abortion (that alone makes me despise the modern US) and spends an ungodly amount on hand outs and "humanitarian intervention" and all that other garbage. I have more respect for pre-downturn Ireland or Liechtenstein or one of the "asian tigers" or something like that.

Pre-downturn Ireland was, as the left in Ireland has started pointing out, voluntarily sacrificing its sociocultural framework by inches on the altar of profit, which is why the downturn happened. Then if you go further back you find that that sociocultural framework was itself Inksed-up in many ways. I love Ireland but it's not a country that seems to really admit of having 'golden ages'. Unless you go back to Brian Boru.

The left (whoever they are) have hardly "started" to point that out. And by the way, despite the downturn, it is still doing that.

Do you mean the left (again, such as it is) has been pointing it out for longer than I've been aware of it or that it hasn't actually started to be pointed out in any meaningful way? I'm going mostly by the new President's statements on the subject here, which I hadn't been hearing much of before him in years of following Irish politics with greater or lesser (admittedly often lesser) degrees of involvement.

I'm completely unsurprised that it's still going on. My point was that pre-downturn Ireland wasn't somehow all roses, because there is a reason why it turned into, well, post-downturn Ireland.

The first one. Criticism of the Property-Finance-PolitcalParties-Vulgarity axis did not begin in 2007. At least the vulgarity has somewhat gone.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

The thing about Gallagher was that he was the embodiment of the cult of the entrepreneur (which became very pronounced during the late Keltic Tigah period) - basically his whole campaign message was "I'm a successful entrepreneur, therefore vote for me" with the assumption behind it was that being a "successful entrepreneur" was the kind of positive value that represented all that was good about the Tigah and what would eventually boost us back to prosperity. The message had a lot of appeal with certain segments of the electorate (though certainly not with others).

Of course, near the end and after the campaign it was revealed that most of Gallagher's business 'success' was due in part to his political connections and in other part due to financial smoke and mirrors. So exactly like every other self-proclaimed "successful entrepreneur" during the era of stupidity and vulgarity known as the Keltic Tigah.