Shortly after my last post about the vice presidential debate, Irish Times columnist Brian Boyd complained that Democrat Tim Kaine “invoked the historical discrimination towards the Irish in the U.S. to highlight the Republican Mike Pence’s support for Donald Trump’s inflammatory views on immigrants.”

But “the Irish in America were inglorious bastards,” he wrote, citing examples of Irish hostility toward African-Americans from the Civil War period to the busing crisis in Boston.

Now, the Times has published a counter column by Niall O’Dowd, founder of Irish Voice, Irish America Magazine and IrishCentral.com.

“There are actually no absolute judgements which makes us as a race in Ireland and America both saints and sinners. That is what objective history teaches, not single issue demonization.”