Thought this telling, an exchange of sorts in the pages of the IT. Very recently there was this review of a new book: The Idea of the Union: Great Britain and Northern Ireland which has 20 contributors, almost all from a pro-Union perspective. Nicholas Allen Baldwin, professor in humanities, University of Georgia penned the review which was, shall we say, somewhat critical of the book.

In this telling Northern Ireland is a natural polity built on rational foundations, and not the construction of a contingent solution to imperial withdrawal. That we might learn something of the actual contexts of the past, and their implications for the future, by thinking about partitions in other times and places is not mentioned in consequence of the necessary fiction that Northern Ireland would work if only its enemies allowed it.

And:

Similarly, most subsequent critique of the state is dismissed as delusion, whether it be in housing or collusion. When extended to Henry Hill's description of the Good Friday Agreement as a "misfiring settlement" this is insensitive to the point of callousness.

There is deep antagonism in many of the essays to the peace accord, which is considered too great, or too broad, a compromise. Unlike the majority of the contributors, who are old enough to have known life before the beginning of the Troubles, I spent the first half of my life in Belfast without knowing anything else. These were harrowing, endless, repetitive times, all of us living in a broken society, warped and traumatized. It is repugnant to diminish the agreement because its framework no longer fits the ambitions of some of its signatories, and careless to assume that only one part of the population suffered in one particular way.

Concluding:

The Idea of the Union is a defence of Northern Ireland as a solid state of fixed and unalterable borders, whatever its provisional history. It expresses a mentality that coincides momentarily with the English separatism that powered Brexit. This is unionism's contemporary dilemma, and its tragedy. For if these two projects meet at the inflection point of Brexit, they may well diverge as the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland fragments under the incompatible ambitions of its constituent parts.

Which saw this response from the editors:

Surely your readers noticed that Nicholas Allen, your reviewer of our co-edited book The Idea of the Union: Great Britain and Northern Ireland, glancingly identified only two out of our 20 contributors and thus never descended to engagement with a book that teems with argument, observation and evidence ("The Idea of the Union: a troubling unionist manifesto", Books, December 18th).

Where is Dr Brian Barton on the origins of partition? Or Dr Graham Gudgin on the assumption of state-wide anti-Catholic housing discrimination? Or Dr Ray Bassett on the Irish government's EU-backed attitude to Britain during Brexit? Or Lord Trimble on the Protocol? Or Mike Nesbitt MLA on the urgent priority of making Northern Ireland work? Or 13 other contributors?

This is a discourtesy to your readers, the editors and writers.

Some familiar names in there, but perhaps they have a point.

And then it continues...

Unionists and nationalists must argue their cases. Instead, your reviewer offers an autobiographical hymn to the Republic and contemptuous dismissal of a reasoned defence of the Union.

Prof Allen expects unionists to devise programmes on education, alleviation of poverty and climate change while they are harassed daily by an increasingly emboldened nationalist front with only one goal in its sights: getting Northern Ireland out of the UK and into a fantasy united Ireland, abetted by Irish governments which he claims have been unionism's friends.

His only quote from the book is by one of us (Foster) on multiculturalism and even then he gets it wrong. When Foster writes that unionists do not qualify even for nominal respect, he is speaking of group attitudes.

If Prof Allen were to read books on multiculturalism by Irish sociologists, he would find that the unionist community is not in their remit. – Yours, etc,

Surely if one is talking about dismissal, that second paragraph in the quote directly above is quite a good example of same.