“don’t think Americans would cotton “
I never liked the IRA because they are socialists, however, colonial revolutionaries would be called terrorists if the british had won.
I like the colonials because they actually were fighting for freedom, as evidenced by the constitution. Irish, however, wanted socialism. To me this is an oxymoron - they want to be independently dependent. This is not freedom. They just wanted their own local home rule to have power and called it freedom. I believe that goes back to the Fenians in the karl marx era.
I think the boston sympathy lies solely on the anti-brit bit of the colonial cause. Per IRA, they only get the propaganda. I don’t know if you can still find “IRA jars” on the counters in some boston bars, but I doubt it.
IRA today is mostly just a bunch of smugglers who use “irish freedom” as a recruiting tool. To find the Irish who wanted real freedom, you’d probably have to go back to the days of William of orange.
Per the ranchers, I am sympathetic to their cause because I see the eco/gov cause intruding on my day to day life, just not to the scale at which they experience it.
So even though I’m not a fan of the IRA, the tactic of having a hard line in between your negotiators and mechanics is a good one, and one way where the ranchers failed in Oregon (which is why I bring it up).
Terrorists target civilians to try and win via terror. Our Founding Fathers made sure to raise a standing army that fought in the prescribed civilized way on the field of battle - not withstanding an occasional Indian style ambush.