Community > Nation > State

When you read all the best accounts of the 'colonial' era in America, you soon see a common thread that the people's loyalty was first and foremost to their community. A coalescing and coming together of the common interests of those communities – Charles Augustus Hanna reckoned there were 500 Scotch-Irish communities in the original 13 colonies – then becomes a nation. And a nation which then, after 1776, became a new state. Communities carry values, traditions, continuity - regardless of their geography or who their governing administrators are. We would do well to remember that momentum, when looking at Ireland's past, present and future. A bottom-up community-first perspective is the most effective way to understand. Imposing a top-down, nation-first mould makes little sense.