Yeah, exactly. It's just stupid to be proud of something so abstract and remote, that doesn't ultimately mean anything or have anything to do with you as a person. Be proud of what you do, who you are. Not where you, your parents or your great great grandparents happen to have been born. National pride is more detructive than positive, and the people who are most proud of their nationality tend to be those with little or nothing else to be proud of.
So yeah, stop saying you're one of us...cos we couldn't really give a shit about being Irish anyway; at least most people I know. It's not like a small village over here, where everybody is on a first name basis and share their crops and daughters. Ireland is just another first world country indistinguishable from the next. Sorry.