"Erin go bragh!"

St. Patrick’s Day began in America in 1762, or thereabouts. It was regarded as a Thanksgiving-type day; church in the morning, and a family supper to follow. Now, it’s all about people of dubious heritage drinking green beer and staggering around in bacchanalian reverie.

The original St. Patrick’s Day dates back to 800 A.D. It falls during the season of Lent, in the Christian tradition, but dates back to the pre-Christ traditions of the Druids.

Along about the time St. Patrick was beginning to be recognized again, among the Irish immigrants in America, a Polish sailor jumped ship in Ireland. He married an Irish girl whose parents had grown up in Wales.

Their child became a captain in the British Marines. He made several trips to America, standing guard over Irish penitents being shipped to the New World at the behest of a fellow named Ogelthorpe.

That captain became enamored of the promise of the New World. Unlike Old Europe, there was nothing that couldn’t be done, in the new land of America. All that was required was a strong back, and a vision for the future.

The captain filed his resignation papers, and jumped ship in slower motion than his daddy. He brought his family to America, and moved north from the fever-swamps of the Georgia coast to the central plateau of South Carolina.

The family flourished at their frontier outpost. They interacted successfully with the Native Americans, and inherited even more land because of a tribal chief’s prophetic dream. They obtained their wealth by kindness, not conquest.

That family went on to establish a backbone of American society. Not a dynasty, like the Kennedy clan, the captain’s children went on to build America. The descendants of that hybrid Polish-Irish soldier grew with America; they propelled the Revolution with Francis Marion, served on both sides in the War of Northern Aggression, and stood for America in the Spanish-American War, War I, War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the current war on terror. An enemy of America does not want to fight the Irish.

When the bugles are not sounding, those descendants of farmers and miners are out plowing our pastures, or standing in classrooms, that no one may forget. We built this country. We will not let it fall to ruin because of political correctness or theological madness.

“ERIN GO BRAGH!”

“Ireland lives forever!”