Under normal circumstances, cities and town would be dyeing fountains and rivers green while their streets echo to the music of the pipe and drum and their pubs and bars swing to fiddle and tin whistle, all accompanied by the consumption of copious amounts of Guinness, Bailey’s or Irish Mist. All eyes of course would be on the huge celebrations in Boston, New York, Chicago, and Savannah, with political leadership, all five branches of the armed forces, all three branches of the first responders, the Church, and the Irish by blood and at heart well represented. I have confidence that by this time next year all will resume... at least I have some.
But wait, say some. How much do we really know about St. Patrick? No one can even pin his birth or death down to specific dates, and, assuming he really existed, he wasn’t even born in Ireland, and may not have had any Celtic blood. His main claim to fame is that he brought Christianity to Ireland, but even that is under question now, with possible evidence of earlier Christian activity. What does a missionary have to do with loud bagpipes, carousing, the uniformed services, and pride in being Irish? Isn’t this just tribalism? Shouldn’t we be getting over this by now?
It is true that St. Patrick is as much legend as history. The time he is supposed to have been active was a time when the Roman Empire was in retreat and barbarism was on the rise, and the Irish were in a less advanced state of development than many peoples of the time. We have only Patrick’s Declaration, which is by no means complete, a limited amount of correspondence, and the various hagiographies to work from, and though some stories associated with him, like using a shamrock to demonstrate the Trinity, are believable, others such as his thrusting his staff into the ground to have it turn into a living tree, his philosophical debate with the last survivors of the legendary Fenian warriors (who had supposedly been routed over a century before at the Battle of Gabhra), and his driving out of the snakes from Ireland (when all scientific evidence points to there never having been any snakes in Ireland) are just stories, designed to make him as we all like our heroes, larger than life and always right.
Every nation, every nationality, every tribe, needs its figure to rally around and define itself by. For the English it was and is St. George, the embodiment of the noble knight, though the man himself, if he existed, never came to England. For Italian Americans, it was and is Columbus, first of our people to open the doors to the New World, who they're trying to take away now (but that's a separate discussion). For we the Irish, whose faith has become almost inseparable from our being, especially after struggling for four centuries to keep it, it is the man who brought that faith to our land, legendary or not, whether anyone questions it or not.
We Irish came to the U.S. fleeing outright oppression and horrible famine foisted on us by conquerors (who one of our own foolishly invited in), who got particularly bad after the time of Cromwell, who I consider one of the thirty greatest villains of history. (tyrant, religious and racial bigot) When we got here we either got thrown right into battle (if we arrived during the Civil War), or we were faced with “No Irish Need Apply” signs and very limited opportunities. In fact Irish laborers were sometimes risked (pre-Civil War) instead of slaves because slaves were too big of an investment to risk.
Eventually, because civil service was one of the few careers that offered reasonable opportunities, we started to fight the fires, keep the peace on the streets, and defend this nation’s interest both on the frontier (1/3 of the cavalrymen who won the West were Irish) and abroad (the Fighting 69th and similar units), and we were accepted.
Whatever goes on back in Ireland, and it isn’t always honorable (sometimes far from it), here we’re the glue that keeps society together. The prototypical Irish-American is still a fireman or a cop, and if you look through the lists of Medal of Honor winners you’ll see names like Daly, O’Kane, McGuire, O’Callaghan, and the most decorated soldier of them all, Murphy. On 9/11 you had whole companies consisting of Irish-Americans responding,
and a lot being wiped out. Three of the four Port Authority cops who took the Halloween terrorist down in 2017 were Irish-American.
We don’t parade the guns, the red trucks, or the blue uniforms because we are the macho or the quarrelsome or the bullies. We don't play the bagpipes and drums to get in anyone's face. We don't wear the green because we want to say "we're different, and therefore we're better." We display our heritage proudly because we’re the people who protect others, who help others, who step up when no one else will. We’ve earned the right to our own day of celebration as much as any other group.
It’s precisely because we have earned that right and the underlying reasons that we must continue to exercise that right, as strongly as possible. For almost a decade now the role of the guardians of society and those who fill that role has come increasingly under attack. It’s not just a matter of being taken for granted. It’s not just a matter of questions being asked that no one thought to ask before. It’s a question of the political left casting society’s guardians as society’s oppressors and declaring disfavored ethnicities’ achievements and honors no longer valid since they can make political hay by doing so. It's a question of deliberately weakening society's protection against chaos. It's a question of a provably false ideal that clipboards and soft talk can make society better than guns and hoses.
The honors won by those I named above are all plenty worthy of a legacy, but our greatest legacy is each day that passes a little more safely and the freedoms that are still intact in part due to our efforts. Unfortunately, safety and freedom last only as long as we can keep them, and we keep them, at least in part, by reminding this nation exactly what we did to keep them. It’s to do that that we must speak out, turn out, keep marching, and keep saluting the members of our community and their achievements.
Don’t let anyone minimize them. Don’t let anyone push them into the shadows. Don’t let anyone say they are somehow tainted so they don’t count. Don’t let anyone say that the passing years have rendered them or us irrelevant. Most of all don’t let anyone say that we’re in the way now. Too often the guardians of society have been the only ones “in the way” of something a whole lot worse taking over. We saw it last year. Is that what you want?
Tá an Ghaeilge beo! Saoil saoirse! Do Dhia, Do Naomh Pádraig, agus dár dtír dhúchasach! Long live the Irish! Long live freedom! For God, for St. Patrick, and for our native land!
Steven Olivo is a state attorney who resides in New Jersey. The article first appeared on Olivo's personal Facebook page. Article and Reprinted by Don McCullen with permission from the author. Photo is from Steven Olivo's personal collection and also reprinted with premission from the author.