"helping Ireland become free from British rule"

This sort of stuff makes me angry. I was raised a Catholic living in the north. So much of the IRA's funding came from 'Irish' Americans wanting to support 'the cause', without stopping to consider what the actual effects might be.

The old cliche of "one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter" is thrown about a lot, but the terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland (or The 6 Counties, or the Occupied North, or Ulster, or whatever you want to call it) often bombed and killed indiscriminately (check http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/151985.stm for an example).

If Americans nostalgic for a land most of them have never even visited had been a bit more enlightened and able to tell the difference between philanthropic giving and funding terrorism, then there'd be a a lot more people walking around in Ireland today.