HALF-FULL REPORT 03/15/24
An Irish Story
It is hard to believe that St. Patrick’s Day is upon us again. My great-grandfather from Cashel, in County Tipperary, left home at 15 after hearing that gold had been discovered near San Francisco. He secured work on a cargo ship bound for Halifax, where he again signed onto the crew of another vessel bound for California. This second vessel was a clipper with a long and narrow design, sporting a copper-clad hull and a high ratio of sail-to-weight.
In exchange for passage, he served as a deckhand, sail handler, or general sailor and arrived in San Francisco quite penniless. He found work as a wheelwright and later as a livery driver when he was fortunate enough to transport baggage for Ellen Ewing Sherman, wife of the later famous Civil War general, on her way to the wharf.
William Tecumseh Sherman was sent to California in 1846 as a captain in the U.S. Army to enforce the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American war. The treaty ceded the present-day Southwestern part of the United States and California to the United States.
Sherman was recalled to New Orleans to teach military science at what is now Louisiana State University in 1850 and ordered to travel overland. His wife was to travel by sea to the Isthmus of Panama, cross by train, and then sail to New Orleans. The Panama Canal had not yet been imagined, let alone built, so this is why she had ordered a livery to take her to her ship.
My great-grandfather and Mrs. Sherman connected, and she hired him to travel as her porter and security to New Orleans. All was well until the ship encountered a storm at the Archipiélago de las Perlas, or Pearl Islands in the Gulf of Panama. The ship hit rocks, and the wooden hull was punctured, forcing passengers and crew onto the small islands. Fortunately, the islands are pretty lush, and small boats rescued Mrs. Sherman, my great-grandfather, and everyone else within a few days.
While he failed to see her belongings safely to New Orleans, he provided security for Ellen Ewing Sherman throughout the voyage, especially while shipwrecked. Upon landing in New Orleans, the now Major William Tecumseh Sherman hired my great-grandfather as a liveryman and teaching assistant at the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy (LSU). My great-grandfather traveled to West Point in 1853 when Sherman was reassigned as an engineering professor at the United States Military Academy. He returned to Louisiana as superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy until 1859, when he retired from active duty, moved to St Louis, and became a banker.
All the while, my great-grandfather studied under Sherman and, in 1861, safely returned Ellen Ewing Sherman to Lancaster, Ohio, from St. Louis, as Major Sherman was reactivated as a colonel in the 13th U.S. Infantry under General Ulysses S. Grant. My great-grandfather then joined Colonel Sherman as an Aide-de-Camp, managing documents, maps, and personal correspondence throughout the war. He did so as a civilian.
My great-grandfather’s story is typically Irish, where success and adventure are the products of hard work, loyalty, and discretion. The lesson passed down through the generations has been the importance of integrity as the magic key to open doors in America.
Sometimes, things move in circular ways, as my son-in-law, a Lt. Col., will assume the command of ROTC education at Tulane, LSU, and Holy Cross Universities in New Orleans this summer. He is assigned to the command that Major Sherman once held.
St. Patrick’s Day is a prominent cultural event for my extended family; the granddaughters and nieces have been practicing their Irish dance steps for months in anticipation of performing in the parade and at the local convention center. As for the young men. their suits are cleaned and pressed, their shoes are polished, and their blackthorn walking sticks are ready. As a clan patriarch, I wear a frock coat and top hat in the Columbus, Ohio, St. Patriack’s Day Parade. There was a day when my status was of a worker, and I wore the traditional flat cap in the parade, but this is America, and I have earned the right to wear the top hat.
There was a day when the Irish were prohibited from working in Northern cities, even after fighting and dying by the score on both sides of the Civil War. The experience forced the creation of a parallel economy. The Irish built their schools and hospitals, built political machines, and gradually dominated urban politics.
President Reagan reached out and explained that the natural political home for the Irish has always been Republican. Since Reagan made his case, millions upon millions of Irish have abandoned the Democrat Party in the United States and joined the Republicans. You might say that many traded in their flat caps for top hats, yet far more proudly continue wearing flat caps while supporting the virtues of freedom and upward mobility at the center of Republicanism. The Republican Party has changed dramatically as a result.
About thirty percent of American military officers, corporate presidents, board members, and professionals are of Irish descent. From the Irish perspective, the current push for wokism and institutional foolishness is a modern form of No Irish Need Apply. While it might seem a bit much to many Americans to don a frock coat and top hat, assemble the family, and join the St. Patrick’s Day parade, the legacy of No Irish Need Apply burns deeply. We will not allow the woke fools to push us from the economy again, especially because of the woke fools’ hatred for the color of our skin.
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Over in Ireland
Ireland voted on two simultaneous referendums this week that were intended to update the language within their 1937 constitution regarding the role of women and the nature of families. Read this as an E.U. attempt to institutionalize wokism in Ireland.
However, to the utter dismay of the E.U., the referendums were soundly defeated. All the major political parties supported yes votes, but the people said no. Article 41 in the Irish Constitution defines a family as a unit based on marriage and does not permit recognition of unmarried couples or other arrangements as married. If the referendums had passed, the door would have been opened for same-sex marriage and so-called durable relationships and would have replaced a reference to women in the home with “caregivers.”
When the results came in, 67% rejected the family amendment, and 74% rejected the care amendment. Liberal lawyers now warn that activist judges must be recruited and installed before the Irish can be made to abandon the constitutionally defined marriage.
Conservative values appear to be alive and well in Ireland despite the best efforts of the E.U. The vote knocks the legs from under the Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and Green parties, and there are calls for ministers to resign from Parliament due to the magnitude of the loss.
It appears that the wokism in the E.U. is facing the same headwinds as wokism in the USA and for similar reasons. When families pass down an oral history through the centuries and teach the lessons learned over generations to their young, the result is happy children with a sense of belonging. No matter how the institutions try to warp and bend society, the oral narratives survive as long as the older generations rise to the task.
The E.U. continues to transport African migrants to Ireland as part of the E.U. plan to modernize Ireland and alter its constitution. At first, migrants were brought directly to Irish cities, placed into hotels, and given financial support. Several well-documented cases of African men kidnapping, raping, and torturing school girls for sport alerted the general population to the E.U.’s plans to subjugate the Irish people. Now, the migrants are transported to Northern Ireland and driven into the Irish Republic.
The floating dock being built by the United States off the coast of Gaza is troubling, as several prominent Israeli politicians have been talking about depopulating Gaza by shipping two million refugees to Ireland. Even if the threats to move the population en masse from Gaza to Ireland are talk, it is hard to imagine how the forced merger of a communist variant of Islam will merge with the conservative Irish. Methinks the referendums to legalize gay marriage that the E.U. desperately seeks to achieve will never pass, and an entirely new breed of cultural warrior will emerge on the edge of Europe. A new religious war against the woke will eventually appear, and the woke will lose badly.
The takeaway is not that the Irish are anti-migrant; it is that the Irish have been the target of economic exclusion and manufactured starvation, property theft, and deprivation for centuries. They are profoundly aware of the color of their skin and hair and the hatred these seem to arouse among the non-Irish. Ireland is discovering its form of MAGA and will likely hold the line while Continental Europe is mired in Ukraine.
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Republicans on the March
Lara Trump replaced Rona Romney McDaniel as co-chair of the RNC this week, and Ms. Trump immediately terminated about 90 employees and consultants. She hit the ground running with matters of election fraud that had been sandbagged since 2019. According to Ms. Trump, election integrity is now Job 1, replacing donation solicitation.
Lara was raised in Wilmington, N.C., and attended N.C. State University. Although no High Point University, N.C.State is a conservative school compared to other public institutions in North Carolina.
Her core messaging is that MAGA voters substantially outnumber liberals, but this does not matter so long as election integrity, lawfare, and counting irregularities dominate the swing states. A massive block of citizens has been disenfranchised, and the RNC has been complicit until now.
She spoke on several talk shows about the Democrats’ plan to flood reliably blue states with illegal immigrants to drive congressional reapportionment after the 2030 census. The census counts warm bodies. Not citizens, as specified by the 14th Amendment. If the census were conducted today, at least 30 new congressional districts would be created in California, New York, Florida, Washington, Texas, and New Jersey. Counting shenanigans can depress Florida and Texas while boosting the other states.
Ms. Trump says that if the Democrats continue preparing the 2030 census battlefield, there will be no chance of controlling Congress for at least a decade. The Supreme Court will be lost for at least thirty years.
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Arrest Liz
The overall theme of this HFR has been the benefit of integrity and the crisis of corruption, as seen through the exclusion of citizens. The fight for election integrity is the issue of our time. We must fight for honest government. The alternative is unthinkable.
Rep Liz Cheney masterminded media efforts to deny President Trump the National Guard troops he requested on Jan 3, 2021, to maintain order in Washington on Jan 6. She coordinated the op-ed with all ten living former Defense Secretaries, Mayor Bowser of Washington DC, the Capital Police, and Nanci Pelosi used to convince the media to turn on Trump’s request. Last year, it was discovered that the FBI had at least 100 agents provocateurs on the ground, and this week, it was revealed that the CIA also had assets in motion. Liz Cheney is now known to have coordinated with these agencies to maximize mayhem. She forward-positioned television cameras along with Pelosi.
Liz led the efforts to impeach Trump and lock him in prison with the threat of execution for treason for not securing the Capital. What is good for the Goose, Liz…
She later suppressed evidence exonerating Trump, proving he had authorized the National Guard to provide security and preposition for Jan 6. Cheney coordinated with FBI Director Wray to block notification to Trump of the FBI’s suspicion of a mass event on Jan 6, while Nancy Pelosi instructed the National Guard to stand down.
It is now abundantly clear that Liz Cheney, the daughter of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, led a coup against the president of the United States. The Republican Party’s old guard supported her efforts by looking away. Liz organized and conducted the sham Select Committee while actively concealing the evidence that Trump attempted to mobilize the National Guard ahead of J6.
It has been 175 years since my great-grandfather first encountered No Irish Need Apply. He overcame the barriers through hard work and integrity. He was trusted at high levels.
And then there is Liz, born into power and severely lacking integrity; she abused power at the highest levels. The consequences of the election are clear. The world is now at war; the economy is stuck on stupid, the military is mocked, and crime is unchecked. What sense of entitlement drove her treason? Was it a will to power or more?
On Sunday, March 17, I will march down Broad Street in Columbus, Ohio, wearing my frock coat and top hat. My grandchildren will join me, and I will tell them about Liz Cheney, her role in the coup, and her motivation to keep the Trumpians out of the federal country club. They will understand the sentiment behind—No Irish Need Apply.
Mike Ryan is a chemical engineering consultant for the Iron and Steel, Minerals, Heavy Chemicals, and Fibers Industries.