They want to see Buckingham Palace become a mosque

OK Lancecorporal,

Perhaps I misunderstood you. What did you mean to say?

Thats simple, Rednecks are seen as backwards idiots with very strange views that they hold strongly and which no amount of reasoning will get them to reconsider or reappraise, just like the muslim fundamentalist idiots in the opening article are.

Back to the etymology of the term .
You refer to late 19th early 20th century and call it of questionable provenance.
The term in America is established in the early 19th century, there are at least 3 publications from the same decade which use it specificly in that manner, though as an interesting side note "cracker" which has even earlier origins was being applied specificly to scottish and ulster-scots presbyterian settlers in Georgia 70 years earlier than the 1830s use of redneck to describe them.
Also of interest with the link to the confederacy is that one of those 1830s literary references to rednecks was written by an anglican minister whose descendant became a rather famous confederate general.

I don't know anything about papist conspiracy theories,

Visit the Knights party website, I am unsure if it is permissible to post link to it on this forum due to the nature of the material it contains. Or look at a certain ulster-scots presbyterian minister giving a speech to the EU.

Maybe you should start with the causes of the wars and the animosity that fueled them.

That would take a post which would make Skybirds longest contributions seem like mere footnotes.

You think the civil war was started over slavery?

There were many contributing factors, State rights were the main issue but also the issue over new states and the issue of slavery in territories which wanted statehood. Bleeding Kansas is a good example of a precursor to the war.

When in doubt, rofl. What aspect of your nation's predisposition to religious violence is so funny, Tribesman? The rest of the world doesn't find it very funny.

what is funny is that you appear to make assumptions about my views on that topic when I have written nothing about it and then go off on those assumptions.
Likewise with ....

My mistake. Ireland is obviously a model of success. We should all strive to be as successful as Ireland. Why, oh why, didn't I see it sooner?

...though what makes that even funnier is that people were hailing Irelands recent "economic miracle" with its unrestricted free market approach coupled with de-regulation and corporate tax reductions as a great success that other countries should emulate, when the truth is that it is a thoroughly corrupt country which was following the same path that Thatcher used of an artificial bubble which will inevitably be followed by a massive downturn(though the difference is that Britain had the capacity to ride out the downturn better). Even calling it the Celtic Tiger should have been a clue for those who were hailing it as a success if they had looked at the pattern the asian tigers economies followed.
So once again you made an assuption and went off on it, but this time managed to attribute a position to me which was more akin to that which many of the republican(and Democrat) politicians were using.

You can't see beyond the walls around your mind. You strike me as being a fairly intelligent person, yet you cannot stoop to educating fools like myself. This tells me that you are not as educated as you have been led to believe, and that you cannot think for yourself.

That is strange since I often just pose questions (sometimes quite cryptic) for people to answer for themselves.

I can only hope that you're not referring to me, because I have never posted anything to indicate that I am a religious fundamentalist of any kind or a republican. I have also never indicated that I am a creationist.

Did I refer to you as such?

Your willingness to immediately assign me to the category of the "religious right" simply because I disagree tells me a great deal about you.

See above.

It tells me that you have a number of leftist beliefs which have been ingrained upon, or willingly accepted, by you. It tells me that you will not tolerate dissent, which is a trait indicative of centrist and socialist governments and their peoples. It tells me that you cannot comprehend anything beyond what you have been taught by the state, which is to be expected of a citizen of Ireland, given the political atmosphere.

Actually I question just about everything, and if the state told me it was tuesday I would check a calendar before I believed it to be true.