"Jim, your solution, unification against the will of the people, would not produce a violent backlash? "
The people of Ireland as a whole have never been consulted on the matter in circumstances that would produce and accrate picture of what they they (as a 32 county nation). Rather they were not given the choice what the country was partitiond and more recently have been shellshocked by twenty odd years of open warfare into hoping (once again) that it will come right in the end.
That shellshock is now wearing off and troubles are starting up again.
Incidentally - as it was you who mentioned taking sides, did you know that following the ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement, numbers of former Loyalist paramilitaries turned their attentions to terrorising eastern European immigrants - violence, threats of same, and arson attacks - that should put them in your 'white hats' team.
Jim Carroll