Hope for Northern Ireland

This past Tuesday I attended a talk by the British Secretary for Northern Ireland, Paul Murphy. While he said a lot of that which I expected, what I did not expect was his statement that tourism in Northern Ireland is up and unemployment is down, significantly. What struck me is: Despite the intransigence of IRA/Sinn Fein and the seemingly immovable mistrust of each side for the other, the lessons that the Irish Republic learned in how to attract and keep business have begun to be learned in the North. The bottom line is that the people of Northern Ireland are likely to leave both the IRA and the Unionist paramilitaries in the dust as they embrace the new religion of mercantilism. The old saying remains true: War will cease because it's bad for business. Once again, we find that what understanding and hope and multi-lateral diplomacy have utterly failed to achieve, has been wrought by the greatest boon mankind has ever known: CAPITALISM.