Teribus says: There were two accounts posted regarding Thomas Kent - which account was the most complete and whose was the most factually honest? Answer please?

Joe's answer: I found your account and said what I thought about it. It seemed to be factual, with a pro-British slant. And it was interesting. I didn't find the other account. It must be in there someplace, mixed in with all the accusations from both sides that people are lying, but I didn't see it. And frankly, I don't have any reason to want to compare posts from two people. I read your post as you asked me to.

You people are really going to have to stop trying to prove each other to be liars. In the sport of boxing, they call it "infighting," boxing closer to an opponent than at arm's length. When a boxing match gets to that point, the referee has to break it up because the fight is going nowhere.

I don't really have a dog in this race. I'm interested in the subject and I want to learn about it. I want to know all perspectives, and I'm quite sure there was right and wrong on both sides of the issue. Since my favorite grandmother was Irish, I have been told since I was young that the British had no business being in Ireland, ever. My other grandmother was French Canadian. She didn't have an opinion on the matter.

But, despite my ancestral inclinations I AM open to hearing people who can come up with an explanation why it would be proper for the English to have a presence in Ireland. It would be interesting to hear such an explanation.

I'm still inclined to think that the Easter Rising was a tactical error on the part of the Irish rebels. It appears to me that Home Rule had been approved by Parliament, and was soon to become a reality. If that was the case, what sense did it make to organize this "Rising" that cost the Irish the lives of so many of their own people? Maybe somebody answered that question, and maybe it got lost amidst all the accusations of lying.

And on the other side, why did the British, who seemed to have the upper hand at the time, feel compelled to execute the rebels and make martyrs of them? That action, whether justified by law or not, made the British look like the cruel tyrants that they did not want to appear to be. So, again, another deadly tactical error that I just can't understand.

These are the things I want to learn in this thread. I really don't want to see all these accusations of lying, and these frantic searches to prove somebody said something two days ago and is saying something different now. All these silly accusations are what turn our threads into battlefields, and they are incredibly petty.

I have worked hard to keep this thread open, mostly by insisting that messages stay on topic. But if you people are going to keep up the lying accusations for another day, I'm going to have to close it, and I won't allow another discussion on the Easter Rising until I'm sure the current battle has calmed down.

Thank you.

-Joe Offer-