Not the least of the many enjoyable consequences of the victory of George Bush in the US elections is the spluttering fury of the anti-Republican elements in Ireland, writes Kevin Myers.
That a Kerry presidency would probably have been an economic disaster for us - which the Taoiseach now acknowledges - is neither here nor there for these hysterical anti-Bushites. They are not concerned about the welfare of real people: of far greater importance to them is to indulge their precious emotions.
The Bush presidency is again being reduced to a caricature: of being religiously fundamentalist and politically unilateralist. Such accusations are simply not correct - but even if they were, who are we to point a finger at anyone? We allow neither abortion nor homosexual marriage. And if any country is unilateralist, is it not this one, which unilaterally embraced the doctrine of neutrality in 1939 - albeit, to be defended by the blood and treasure of others - and has retained it as a dogma of foreign policy ever since? What is most odious about the Irish caricatures of the Americans who supported Bush is the view that they are stupid mid-western Protestants. The judgment is both crudely sectarian and deeply inaccurate: in Ohio, for example, 53 per cent of the Catholic vote went to Bush. And it was in Ohio that I first learnt of the warm and generous people who inhabit the unglamorous American states, far from the cities and the seas.
Aged 20, with a rucksack on my back, I set off to hitch-hike round the USA. "You're mad", was the overwhelming consensus of my New England friends. "You'll never get any rides, and you'll probably get shot." Well, I certainly didn't get any rides in the Irish sense of the word, but I got lifts galore. There was never any problem. Women as well as men would stop and tell me to hop aboard as I headed west, across New York state, Pennsylvania and into the flatlands of Ohio, through Zanesville, Springfield, and into Indiana. The people were simple there: you couldn't put the thinnest razor-blade between what they said they believed and what they actually believed. And that belief was real: it was the guiding principle to how they lived their lives.
We're not good at that in Ireland. We have laws against murder, but in reality, very many Irish people actually attach a "sort of" to the injunction that thou shalt not kill. We know that many in the Catholic hierarchy were complicit in covering up child abuse and child abusers. We know about the unspeakable rottenness within our political system. We know what to expect when the plumber says he'll be there at ten. We know about the meaninglessness of law and promises, whenever the opposite suits.
This is not the way of the people in the mid-west of the US. When they give their word, they mean it. The idea that as a matter of practice you could say one thing and do another is not merely anathema to them; they simply wouldn't understand it.
Many of their beliefs were not my beliefs. They all supported the war in Vietnam, and I of course was against it. They flew the US flag outside their homes, which I thought ridiculous. They were unashamed of their love of country, which I thought outdated. They were unwavering in their opposition to the Soviet Union, which I thought hilarious.
Who was right? I wouldn't defend the way in which the US prosecuted the war in Vietnam, but what would have happened to this world if the US had allowed the communists to take over in Vietnam, years before? Were those mid-westerners not right to oppose the Soviet Union, as they did? (But not half as passionately as the hundreds of millions of unfortunates living under communism.) And do the US flag and unashamed patriotism not stand for a open endorsement of public virtue, which runs seamlessly into a worship of God? When wedded to the sense of individual freedom which underwrites the US identity, these are surely not bad qualities, even if the theatre might not be all that wonderful in Junction City or Abilene, and the people not great conversationalists. To be sure, sometimes their grasp of geography was sometimes also a little shaky: many weren't too sure of the differences between Scotland and Ireland. But they did know the difference between good and evil: and they consciously, every day, chose to be good.
Which is the finer electorate? One which might not know the differences between Dublin and Edinburgh, but sees politics as a means of ensuring the world is a genuinely better place? Or one that is very knowledgeable about geography, and then elects Michael Lowry, Martin Ferris, Beverley Flynn, et alia? The longer I knew these people, the more in love with them I fell. Usually I slept beneath the stars in a sleeping bag, but sometimes drivers took me home, and fed me, and gave me a bed, with breakfast usually at 6.30 a.m; for these people work hard, and their days are long. And then it was back on the road again, to Laramie, Medicine Bow and Rawlins, to the Rockies and beyond. California, Arizona, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana would soon know the fall of my foot.
Do not judge these communities lightly. They try to live by God's law, but without unduly imposing their ways on others. With their irrepressible sense of freedom, patriotism and civic duty, they saw off the warriors of the Third Reich, the Bushido, and the Kremlin. In time, they'll see off Islamic terrorism too.