"Irish Democracy"

No, not democracy as you currently find it in Ireland... something older.

"One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called 'Irish Democracy,' the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs."

In the linked article, Glenn Reynolds proposes that this approach, silent resistance, is already playing havoc with both the drug war and the president's health law.

My Irish side is put in mind of an old joke. I heard it something like this:

An tribe of cannibals catches a Frenchman, an Englishman, and an Irishman. They are told they will be cooked and eaten, and their skin will be used to make a canoe. But they are each allowed one last request. The Frenchman asks for a glass of wine. The Englishman asks for a cup of tea. The Irishman asks for a fork. The puzzled cannibals give him the fork, and he begins to stab himself with it, all over his body.

"What are you doing?" they ask.

He replies: "Screw you and your canoe."

When they demand compliance,
some choose sullen defiance.