You pen a really interesting post. I grew up in an Ireland fairly recently freed from the yoke of British rule. 'It's a free country' was our favourite retort to any who would question our words or actions, and we genuinely felt that it was. I don't know how or when it happened, but we woke up one day in some second-rate dramatisation of 1984.
I am not surprised you are taken aback by what Ireland's national aspirations have become. I recently read Keith Woods discussion of Irish Nationalism and what Sinn Fein has beome is utterly the reverse of it's roots.
Keep the faith.
I've never voted as I don't believe that politics can change anything and besides, I don't like to encourage the buggers. My father was a lifelong republican socialist and Sinn Fein supporter and I'm certain he's turning in his grave to see them welcoming in the marauding hordes...Brits Out, everyone else in.
Maybe we've grown wiser and saw that freedom was a relative term... and we're not the ones setting the limits.