I tried to get back into the thread of posts I began on 07-04, but either my PC has a glitch, or we've been cut off at the source. At any rate, I feel uncomfortable leaving that Fourth of July topic hanging as it were, and I want to clear the air.

First, Yanks, I am a Yank and a Georgia Cracker to boot, and I use the terms with pride and affection. I'll add Geezer to that list for the limited number of you who might remember a popular World War II song entitled "Over There" in which the lines proclaimed:

Over there, over there;
Send the word that we'll soon be over there.
For the Yanks are coming ...
We'll be over;
We're coming over;
And we won't come back
'Til it's over over there.

Perhaps a bit sappy for the Now, the Hip, or the X Generation, but it still gets me every time I remember it. And we do know how that effort worked out. Seems to me a lot of folks were happy to see the Yanks when they arrived. And there are a lot of people my age who grew up without fathers because their fathers were among the Yanks who didn't come back.

Allow me to say that my post contained no intentional, thinly veiled, anti-American sentiments whatever. The phrase "from sea to shining sea" is from a song entitled "America the Beautiful" which I have heard sung numerous times in church services to celebrate the belief that God has blessed this country immeasureably. Please forgive my impatience, if that is the way this comes off, but I just couldn't walk away from this exchange with someone thinking I had slammed my country. I just don't operate that way.

One last thing, and correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this website originate from somewhere in America?

Is mise le meas Seán

Seán,

Yes, Daltaí is based in America, but more to the point, our purpose is to promote the preservation and teaching of the Irish Language and so is the purpose of this board.

Political posts have their place, but not here.

In the past we have watched otherwise innocuous (and some not so innocuous) off-topic threads spiral into political diatribes and quickly descend into flame wars offending many, both within and without this country, in the process.

So your computer is functioning correctly. We cut the thread off purposefully because we could see where it was headed, like too many threads before it.

Lets keep things devoted to the preservation and study of the Irish language. It is a worthy goal, not to mention our stated purpose - and the one subject that everyone here can agree upon.

Caoimhín

P.S. And yes, this thread has been locked too.