Erthygl ddiddorol ar hunaniaeth genedlaethol a gwleidyddol. Dw i ddim yn cytuno â holl swm a sylwedd yr awdur, ond mae’n wneud llawer o bwyntiau pwysig am beryglon cenedlaetholdeb diwylliannol arwynebol.

There is more at stake in Northern Ireland than “identity.” If it were only about identity, the conflict really would be insoluble, for if the republicans should be true to their Irish roots, why should the Loyalists not be equally true to their British roots? Or is Hayden suggesting that they go back to the land of their ancestors, which for many of them would be Scotland? In fact, the conflict is as much about social discrimination as it is about religion or political rights. How to find a political solution which safeguards the interests of the Catholic minority as well as the Protestants is extremely difficult. To see it as a colonial war, as Hayden does, which would be solved as soon as the hated enemy goes home, is naive at best, and dangerous at worst. But one doesn’t have to be a Sinn Fein sympathizer to regard the treatment of their battles as a form of personal therapy for American visitors as an insult.
[rhagor]