Tomorrow is Saint Patrick’s Day. St. Pat (néeMaewyn Succat) was a 5th century Brit, abducted as a teenager and trafficked as a swineherd to Ireland, where he got religion. He later escaped, went to France, and became a priest (at either Lérins Abbey or Auxerre) before returning to proselytize in Ireland. A millennium later, North America’s early Irish immigrants and their descendants began to celebrate the day of his death as a joyous holiday, which seems a wee bit ghoulish.
The party ramped up after the Potato Famine increased Irish immigration to the US in the mid 19th century. St. Patrick’s Day became a celebration of parades, corned beef and cabbage, fiddle music, soda bread, and green beer rather than the solemn saint’s day it had been in the Auld Sod, but that’s America for you. In the 20th Century, US tourists in Ireland expected a big bash on March 17th, and the host country was glad to oblige, celebrating the infusion of greenback dollars. The holiday has now gone global. Faith and begorrah!
The Semiquincentennial of the birth of the United States is also the 250th anniversary of the publication of Edward Gibbon‘s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
“’The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost,’ writes Gibbon, ‘when the legislative power is nominated by the executive’—a caution that our Congress should more carefully heed. ‘But the wisdom and authority of the legislator are seldom victorious in a contest with the vigilant dexterity of private interest’—a tendency which the Supreme Court majority might have considered more carefully before it made its Citizens United decision. ‘Whole generations may be swept away by the madness of kings in the space of a single hour’—a truth that might have become the motto of DOGE. ‘The Roman government appeared every day less formidable to its enemies, more odious and oppressive to its subjects’—as pithy an encapsulation of the current situation as can be imagined. “
–“The Chronicler of Decline: Is it too late for our republic to learn from Gibbon’s epic history of Rome’s collapse?”, Ed Simon, The Hedgehog Review
The Strait of Hormuz, a 21 mile-wide passage between Iran and Oman, supports 20% of the world’s oil supply. The oil chokepoint is center of conflict between the US and Iran. A Vox video.
NotionsCapital 
