In today’s Wall Street Journal Dalrymple comments, as he did recently in National Review, on the collapse of the Irish debt bubble. He makes the case that

Considering the scale of the debacle, public expressions of anger in Ireland have been muted…[A]part from the odd insult thrown at the political class—particularly at members of Fianna Fail, the overwhelmingly dominant political party that is a textbook illustration of the eternal verities of Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” whose revolutionary porkers became establishment men—the reaction has been remarkable, and impressive, for its moderation.

And this is somewhat mind-boggling:

The Royal Bank of Scotland, by itself, extended loans in Ireland amounting to $12,000 for every man, woman and child in the country: loans that would have amounted to $3,600,000,000,000 if applied to the United States[.]