Itchallengesthenewatheists, whosee themselves involved in a warofreasonagainstfaithand who have an unwarranted faith in thepowerofpure reason and in the purityoftheir ownreasoning.
More important, however, nationalists seem to have gained a political self-confidence that unionists now lack, born of both war-weariness and faith in the leadership of Sinn Fein and the moderate Social Democratic and Labour Party, the largest nationalist party.
That catastrophe, coming on the heels of World War I, destroyed the faith countless numbers of people had in democratic politics and traditional free markets.
But the biggest tragedy of that war was that it fundamentally undermined the faithof tens of millions of people in the liberal, moral, economic and political values that formed the foundation of the Western World.