Thank you everybody for coming. I im a visiting fellow here at coi and f we are here for a gret conversation. It will be a conversation tonight about nationalism, family and fatherhood and the excellent new book i love, my father left me ireland by Michael Brendan dougherty. In some ways this is different from what we do from what i used to. Im a scholar here at aei and fear of the American Enterprise institute forar Public Policy research. We do lots of social science studies and in fact, social science studies get a bad name in my father left me ireland, but in a way that highlights what we have in common. It is often as he puts it a nation today in the modern way of thinking is often come up with, at best problematic. It is best problematic as an administrative unit. That section is tipped off by talking up singing to his newborn baby over and over again in the same songs. The wind that shakes the barley and even the game i tried to sing in the global byway i also sing my children to sleep because they are of a pc and i dont have the vocal chordson mr. Doherty does. The stories that we tell our children, this is another way of educating in addition to the Public PolicyResearch Type stuff that typically do here at aei and there are virtues and perils. My story quickly before we get to the author here is one of the perils learning about world war ii, charlie turned to me and said im a little confused. Are the british and the nazis the same thing, and i have to say no, what are you talking about sex we were on the same side of the british in world war ii. And he said we were on the same side as the british . I realize growing up with the stories at the same time, the love of america that had to fight against the bricks into the irishness you could come to understand isou only the bad gu, so i had to set them straight on that i thought about the low light icing i would sing to us except by children name your coconspirators and he answered no and was sent off. Why did he sing these songs to our children, not to demonize them at all was because we know the creation of a good populist, the creation of improving the world, the same thing we treated ithe public plus the research, all of that primarily is a good job of a Public Policy researcher, but of our poets and storytellers and so here at aei is excellent but we have in my opinion a brandnew irishamerican poet and storyteller who will give us a hefew remarks about this great book my father left the ireland. Michael, thank you. [applause] ive had trouble people ask me what is l this book and its hard to summarize in the 14 seconds before the commercial break interrupts you, so im going to quote it no vanity inou my heart that old a couple of reviews of the book just to situate it. It is a timeless tale of familial bonding. Its a heartbreaking poem to sacrifice and alan jacobs called it a bit of revisionist history but not in the unusual sense of the term. It was also called by ezra klein coming and i thought this was really good in moving theic lyrical memoir about fatherhood and identity. Its an attack and critique on some of the poor assumptions of liberal modernity. Its also i would say fundamentally ait romance book. Let me just set the scene here. Im 6yearsold and sitting in the backseat of a car by another grandfather in the front seat. The morning before we flew to ireland and as we were landing i dipretended to count the shapesf green as he circled above the airport. He happened to know if there mwere 40 Like High School teachers said, that this point in the back of a car you are looking outherelooking out overa very deep gray sky, so much that its turning of allll the greens blue. The windnd was around. Possibly the oldest memory i can recall of being with my father and one of the few i could make fodid makefor several more year. My father has been talking about this job driving around delivering books. This is long before the eu build roads and highways while mixing everything beautiful in this file. Hes looking at my mother in a bubbly way which was new to me and if hes trying to say to her watch this and thats when he turns to me and informs me of our noble blood that i have for him, did you know that you are dissented from the high kings there are parts of the cars that are torn and parts of my fathers sweater. I noticed in examining my reaction. Plus the irish blood, the irish royal blood had gotten us nothing impressive at all except it was still a boost over the whole earth. My mother let her heart sickness over this man drive her crazy anyway. Her appearance listened to irish lullabies like to throug shed to think of herself as irish and her son as irish. She started studying thege language, taking the are these weekends in rural new york where you are forbidden from speaking the birla. She started singing songs in teaching me the history through them. The history i learned as a child was straightforward and hear a ont of people coming out of the captivity. Colonization on the one side and ms. Wu on the other. Irish people, rebellions as catholic confederates against protestant usurpers, irishmen against the misrule as poor white lieutenants against their wicked way with words. Aas young ireland republicans against the power of thela englh monarchy andng a singing nationalist against the british imperialism and finally come ase alirish nation itself pitted against those who have attempted to rob them of their culture of their history and self understanding. Rebellion yourself means you irish. What could i have to rebel against. I got tired of this as a teenager. Its about the view in history that he and his countries set out to destroy the leaders of irelands volume. At the moment that the body of radicals, short circuit and the democratic process and instead of the rules, the irishul are sent. Hethe same because of the civill war, theye lose decent english build institutions and have to turn towards a church that is corrupt and crony esque. In an august since its a code of the racial and political bigotry of. That is the view of the professional cast i passed in te 1990s, and increasingly then it was my view, too. What plus what was i going to ps superstore on the atlantic. Three of the education i got another one that taught me to despise these things was an education that wasnt really preparing me for anything about manhood. It wasnt providing me. Having children, raising them correctly, and eventually i did mary. I look back at these men like ppatrick pearse. He did a little career in the fall beginning i of the 20th century before turning his mind to education. He founded the school and was kind of an experimental Educational School for boys. It was a nationalist spectacle the boys put. On plays, he taugt one in my approach, it was an education and he taught them irish sports particularly hurling. He denounced the Education System set up in ireland. He compared it to the separate Education System set up for antiquity. Heor wrote all mobile and good things that would tend to make them strong and proud and valiant. From the slaves all such was hidden they were told not t tauo be stronge and valiant but to be dexterous and object wasnt to make them good men do but to mae them good slaves andsign ireland. Sleek and dexterous. I remember reading these words with my sleeping newborn infant daughter in my lap and thinking this is harvard and yale and every product of those prep schools and washington, d. C. The idea of becoming strong and powerful is something i was taught in school to laugh at. Not directly but theec implica implication. I had to come from this man, pierce. He was a moderate like everybody else in 1910, 1912 when the rules first past. As he saw it he joined with the nationaliststs as many others dd and he wrote this essay which has been formative in history ever since. Translator the men who fled ireland for 25 years have done evil and they are bankrupt and i policy, credit, not even n words. They have nothing to propose ireland no ways, no courage and based on the church and blasphemy. Its no longer the utterances of men but thend chattering of our soul. Its built upon an untruth. Theyve conceived of it as a material thing whereas as a spiritual thing they need the same main man would think if he decides he has an immortal soul. They do not recognize the image and likeness of god hence the nation to them isnt a holy thing, violent and viable, the thing a man that are not. They thought of the nationalities to be negotiated about a tariff rather than an immediate jewel to be preserved a thing so secret it may not be brought into the marketplace at all were spoken of. He was announcing this generational curse on the home rulers. We try to bargain with an enti entire. I parliament that they were subverting the democratic achievements. My use of the essay enddoublequotes prop up to me. The other day on the irish radio host said its sustainable of democracy. If extremist demands echoed ever since to take things into their own hands. In fact, pierce wasnt totally disdainful of democracy. It was only on this one point whether the nation was a holy thing to be preserved against all peril. Whether people would recognize the image of likeness and god and its life. The radio host was correct about my intentions with that passage and spoke i borrowed the generational curse. Life bearing the image and likeness of god has transgressed and as it goes on it doesnt lessen the guild but increases the machine. Its general though not just specific to the event. It is a shame if old generation that believed by liberating itself from the taboo and prejudice it would find freedom. They were liberated from responsibility from care from their own children into fatherlessness is now common in america, becoming common in ireland. So this book is an audible. The joy of my life was discovering suddenly i was doing the same crazy things myy mother did. We tend to think of parenting as a way of extending ourselves in the future when we think of that biologically but i noticed in this book it works the reverse way my child sent me back to my parents and wouldd give me books i would recognize as my mother or fathers death means my child and pressed upon me the duty to go to my parents and ask them what to do. It was also my mother in particular in pulling me towards the future. She too was bothering me at her dying breath to give her grandchildren. Ive only gotten three so far, we are working on it. I found that pierce was right when he talked about the hand of the past weighing on the present of the future. My mother waited on me to become a man, becoming a father. History weighed upon these rebels to man up and do something. Athat biological connection to y father the joy of my life after my daughters birth is the making in fact half my irish fathers parentage, the socialcal facts into the fact he sees my grandchildren more than me he saw his tgrandfather the first phase of her life and couldnt see me for nine or ten months and so the book is a romance of fatherhood. My father and i missed each other and only found each other late like any good romance novel and so i come back to that sto story. The implanted something in me, that story into this longing for him and somehow we navigated the misunderstanding. As the irishman even ones with accents, we arere crowned with d songs and foolish absurd sacrifices that annoy everyone else. My daughter runs to his lap and calls him granddad. I would trade that for all its place in india, all of the overall materials in iraq or the tv dumped in boston harbor. Thank you. [applause] weve all come to the stage to respond christopher caldwell, the editor of the claremont books and is writing a second book so if theres anybody to comment on a a book it is christopher caldwell. Please tell us what you think is the most interesting and important about the book. Almost everything about the book is interesting and important. He said it was hard to describe what it was about. I think i can describe it. You have a basic situation here he was brought up by his mother who and left by his father. It actually represents the autobiography of our most famous irishamerican,ri our last president but this is a more ambitious and glittery attempt to bring two stories together. If you look at the titles my father left the ireland, thats the title of two books one is my father left me and the i seconds ireland so there is something in the first book you have a very sad book of this sort irish people cant really write as a sort of self revealing autobiographical point americans excel out and other people dont. Do you mind having somebody read . Pl i want everybody to read it. I would like to read a passage. Its the perfect description of something a lot of children of divorce will kind of share. I sat in my grandmothers rocking chair in the uniform of my school, gray slacks, white shirt and coffin tie. They told the news, your wife is pregnant. I let myself forget. I was going to be a brother, technically have one. How was i a brother to someone that wasnt my mothers child, was likely to be to them what it was to me being a child i couldnt even ask these questions. One thing i had to deploy was the exact response they wanted to solicit from me. Neither of us got to see how high this was. Venturing up under the delusion i would make it to school before the neighbors returned me to wear any 7yearold child that way belonged but in that moment they gave me a goodbye hug. All he ever wanted was for things to change. I never thought any of it through until then. I didnt know why you lived 3,000 miles away. I just knew enough not to ask. This announcement revealed to me the secret hope in my heart so this is the material which this is built and as michael has described, he started to study ireland which is kind of a sad thing when you think about it. Theres the raw material of a kind of interesting resolution. I will describe this without dampening the experience of leaving this for anybody but this b book is not about the mythology of ireland and the words of ancient time and all that stuff. Its actually kind of a close study of the easter rising and its about the origins of the easter rising if you know the book about the ideological origins of the resolution. But i think he finds and correct me if this is nonsense but its not so much the release of a nation from captivity but a tination into identity and the interesting thing about these people spectacularly in a very filled out way but for all the people involved in the rising was about claiming an idea for themselves and here it comes subtle. Its about an assertion of ones identity that ireland never had before. Once it is over and the civil war starts, it becomes clear that they did have that identity and that is the sort of what he was seeking in a pair of old way. That is what he is seeking in his own family in a parallel play. I was running these stories wtogether. What was interesting to me there is all this ideological that gets spoken of the easter rising obut some of it is actually useful he wont talk about the lmvement to establish israel. They had almost gotten comfortable with the label and one of the reasons the rising in 1916 was so transformative for irish like thissh for 30 years from 1898 to 1916, ireland had been filling with this Cultural Movement sports, language revival, they have been filling themselves with these sentiments mourning the death of the irish nation and the famine and then suddenly enters onto the stage a political crisis and then onto this moment in the stage tom clark starts translating this sentiment into the political reaction and in the same way and a much smaller parallel ein borrowing their wish until it becomes true in my own life, willing to become a father he should have been. One thing i want to ask you about the universality of this, some of the first people to react to w your book you talk about zionism and hebrew and the Irish Language. You see from 100 years ago in some ways they are similar to the movements we see today the leaders were interested in the National Movements in czechoslovakia and hungary and india later many of them would meet with indian figures to discuss the mutual project of this establishing the territory. The one nation who comes out of world war i feeling totally vindicated probably his pool and, the idea of the nation as attractive after a century so there is a commonality among the nationalists and people remarked today fact that nationalists or National Conservatives talk to the ones in hungary or other ones in france or brazil as if it is a betrayal of their ideas when in fact it is just a calling common way. Theres nothing about nationalism but for the few, burger king and hoping for the good of the similarly minded people in other nations. Michael has written very intelligently and very independently, certainly aboutio nationalism in europe. Theres an irish nationalist somewhere in the middle of the 19th century but he taught himself hungarian and wrote a great book about the hungarian nationalism. I think an interesting thing aboutsm the idea of nationalism that comes in this book and i want to stick with this idea that it is working in parallel to the personal identity of the family is that nationalism is one of the things that makes the subject is interesting. Nationalism is about strength. I will quote this passage about that. The latitude of the irish this is one of the aspects it usually doesnt explain from the conviction ones nation is best in every way back from Something Like a panicked realization that nobody in the authority or around you is taking theas natin seriously, but everyone is engaged in a private enterprise while the common inheritance is being threatened or robbed it might don a mask of invincibility but it got s but e full fearful knowledge of the nation solubility. No one i in ireland thinks tt its the best that just about anything. No one thought weve always been the greatest at the industry philosophy. Its much more comic than that. However, this Cultural Movement did end up producing the literature that is the bible and the pound for pound champion in western europe in the 20th century. It is funny that its misunderstood even in ireland. I talk about the antinationalism that was born of suffering and sorrow inflicted by those who put on the mantle of the 1960s rebels not for the peak in this almost doomed attempt to serve the nation honorably and they marched in to turn up the sword to the Commanding Officer on the other side of the battle. That wasnt the provisional tactics in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s so there was a highly motivated determination to tear down the mythology and you know its still within 2016 as they were celebrating these events i was singing these songs to my infant daug