GOPLOG

GOPLOG went to press late this week because of two very important events.  First was Monday's preference vote by the Cape May County Regular Republican Organization in the Freeholder contest.  The other was Gov. Chris Christie's Budget Address.

The first of these events has certain won the buzz war in Cape May County.  Everywhere I went yesterday, people were asking, "What will you write about them throwing Jerry out?"  "What are you going to write in your blog about what they did to Jerry?"

On that score I write this:   One cannot write what has yet to be written.  I don't believe even Chapter One of that story is finished.

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This is St. Patrick's Day.  For most folks that means wearing some green and trying to choke down a black beer after work.  But for the Irish it means something more.

For literally hunders of years, the Irish were dominated by the British.  It was a long, brutal and inhuman domination.  Ireland possessed its own unique and vibrant languge before the English arrived.  Once England established its control, it forced the Irish to speak only English.  Irish children were beaten if they spoke a word of Irish in school.  The Irish toiled as peasants under British rule for generation upon generation.

The Irish aided the Americans during the Revolution.  The fact that America had gained its freedom from the Crown, while the Irish still lived in oppression, troubled George Washington, who wrote.

"Ireland, thou friend of my country in my country's most friendless days, much injured, much enduring land, accept this poor tribute from one who esteems thy worth, and mourns thy desolation."

It was the Great Famine of the 19th century that drove most of our ancestors to sail for American shores.  But the famine was not just a cruel natural blight that wiped out crops, it was used as a tool of oppression by the British.  Rest assured, that the English manor lords were not starving to death during the famine.  In fact, in 1996, the New York based "Irish Famine/Genocide Committee" commisioned a study by an Illinois law professor that concluded that "during the years 1845-1850, the British government pursued a policy of mass starvatoin in Ireland with the intent to detroy in subtantial part the national, ethnic and racial group commonly known as the Irish People."  Interestingly, in 1996, the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust and Genocide Education, through the efforts of a State Senator named Jim McGreevey, approved the Great Irish Famine as an appropriate subject to be included in holocaust and genocide curriculum. 

Most people, even most Irish people, don't really know about the Great Famine.  The scale of the loss of life was staggering.  The population of Ireland was recorded in 1841 at 8,175,124, though historians agree it was as much as 25% higher than that since census taking was slip shod.  By 1851, 2.5 Million Irish people had died.  The Times of London, not in a lament, but proudly, proclaimed, "They are going.  They are going with a vengeance.  Soon a Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the streets of Manhattan."

After centuries of insurgency, the Irish finally gained a modicum of Freedom in 1921, and ecaped from the Commonwealth thereafter to become the Republic of Ireland.  But the British still occupy six counties in the North of the Country.

In 1987, I had the good fortune to live in Ireland for about five months as a student and aide to a Member of Parliament.  The Irish have not forgotten their history.  Though we in American have a great fondness for the British after being so closely allied through two World Wars, the Irish display a grudging acceptance of their closest neighbor with one eye on hundreds of years of oppression at their hands.

And you wonder why the Irish have this strange happy sadness about them.  There is happiness in a pint, but not at the bottom of a pint.

Yet, Ireland's future is bright.  When I was there in the late 80's, they were debating whether to enact a string of reforms that would give tax and other incentives to business to locate in Ireland.  Reforms were passed.  Businesses flocked to the island.  The Irish economy became known as The Celtic Tiger.  And for the first time in perhaps its recorded history, the young did not have to leave Ireland to find a better life.  I can't help but to compare the Ireland of 1987 to New Jersey in 2010, where we are now beginning the great debate that will define our economic future for decades to come.

So when you hoist your green beer (or better, black beer) later today, pause for a moment to remember the Irish.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!