Draw Breath

I'm about to leave Atlanta Georgia for the long trip back to Belfast (via Newark). I flew in on Wednesday evening to attend a very interesting conference on Democracy and Extremism, populated mostly by political scientists. It was all very interesting and I learned an enormous amount. I gave a paper on the Parades Commission (generally on my predelictions for thinking of conflict resolution in Northern Ireland in a regulatory frame) and was part of the opening round-table on defining extremism (my contributions being to say that I'm not convinced that there are that many extremists in Ireland and a rather long ramble on the possibilities and profound difficulties involved in distinguishing between actions in conflicts and actions in relatively stable democracies).¹

Anyway, this morning was interesting. I wandered with a few fellow participants to the Martin Luther King National Historic Site.