Fool's Gold

In the year of the famine, When starvation and Black Death raged across the land, There were many driven by the Hunger To set sail for the Americas;

In search of a new life, and a new hope -- Oh, but there were some that couldn't cope; And they spent their lives in search of Fool's Gold.

Philip Parris Lynott, of blessed memory.

Go dtuga Dia suaimhneas da anam*



As they staggered from the ships that had carried them across the Atlantic, many of the Irishmen driven to America by the Famine were immediately accosted by recruiters trolling for warm bodies to fill federal uniforms.

The "Irish Achilles": Legendary warrior Cu Chulain, also known as the "Hound of Ulster."



The native pugnacity of the Celts is legendary (it's been said that all Irish ballads are about some combination of fighting, drinking, and dying), and more than a few of the Patriot heroes of our War for Independence were sons of Eire. So there was little reason to doubt that Irish recruits would acquit themselves well on the battlefield, assuming that they were well trained and motivated by a worthy cause.


Neither of those conditions was met in Washington's war on Mexico, a vulgar exercise in naked imperial greed that provoked Henry David Thoreau's immortal tax protest and prompted a defiant campaign against the conflict by a freshman Whig Congressman from Illinois. That Whig, a chap named Lincoln, would be denied a second term when his own party refused to re-nominate him -- and he would ultimately have a rather dramatic change of heart regarding the morality of aggressive war.


The Irish who enlisted in the US Army offered their blood on behalf of a country they had not yet come to know, and a government that had done nothing to earn their allegiance. Most of them were simply desperate for work of any kind, and the soldier's wage of $7 a month was sufficient to keep their loved ones from succumbing to hunger, a predator with which they were quite familiar.


Then, as now, the Jingo press was indecently eager to shed foreign blood, but didn't know quite what to make of the un-assimilated foreigners flooding into the army. Historian Anne-Marie O'Connor recalls: "The US anti-immigrant press of the time caricatured the Irish with simian features, portraying them as unintelligent and drunk and charging that they were seditiously loyal to the Pope."


Attitudes of that sort coalesced within the Army as well. Irish recruits often found themselves on the receiving end of various kinds of abuse. In anticipation of the conflict with Mexico, most of the Irish were quickly southbound to the border, and it was common for those who attended Mass to be accused of "consorting with the enemy" -- since the Catholic Irish were seen as having a natural affinity with the Catholic Mexicans.


After President Polk and General Taylor succeeded in provoking the war, many of the Irish recruits were outraged by the cruelties inflicted on priests and nuns. General Taylor blithely admitted on one occasion that "there is scarcely a form of crime that has not been reported to me as committed by them [the troops under his command]."

US Troops lay siege to Monterrey.


Those atrocities, coupled with the commonplace bigotry and injustice they experienced, had the effect of watering down the allegiance of the Irish troops -- and that allegiance was already a pretty thin broth.


These men had seen their homeland ravaged by a catastrophe created, in large measure, through British mercantilism. As Mark Thornton of the Mises Institute points out, those who fled the Potato Famine were the victims of "conquest, theft, bondage, protectionism, government welfare, public works, and inflation." Those beguiled into enlisting found themselves being used as cannon fodder in a war against people for whom they bore no natural grudge, and with whom they had much in common.


Nothing but Fool's Gold could be found at the end of that particular rainbow. Accordingly, many of the Irish recruits sloughed off their supposed obligations to the US government and chose to enlist instead with the Mexicans who were fighting on their own soil against an invading foreign army.


The banner of the "San Patricios" Battalion -- Irish expatriates who fought on behalf of Mexico against the invading US Army.


Was this desertion, or treason? No: It was a species of secession. Neither honor nor morality dictated that Irishmen should take up arms against Mexicans on behalf of Washington, D.C. Accordingly, hundreds of Irishmen simply repaired to a banner -- a shamrock green flag (hand-embroidered by the nuns of San Luis Potosi) bearing a Celtic harp and the legend Erin go bragh (Ireland Forever) and a cause -- the defense of their fellow Catholics -- that actually commanded their loyalty.


The most notable of the "Red Guards" -- as they were called by the Mexicans because of the red hair and sunburned complexions that typified the displaced Irishmen -- was John Riley of Galway, who could have been called a "premature Wetback-in-reverse": Denied the opportunity to attend Mass, Riley swam across the Rio Grande to Mexico, fleeing Washington's jurisdiction in search of religious freedom. Other Irish refugees followed him, and Riley was eventually appointed captain of the 200-member "San Patricios" Battalion (taken from the Spanish name for St. Patrick), which would go on to fight five major engagements against the US Army.


Ah, but this is an Irish story, so you know it must have ended badly.


The August 1847 battle at Churubusco -- appropriately, a town named for an Aztec war god -- was the bloodiest engagement of the war. The San Patricios fought with doomed courage, losing more than half their number in combat with nearly all the rest falling into the hands of the enemy -- their former employer, the US Army.


Drumhead military tribunals quickly sentenced most of the San Patricios to hang as "deserters." John Riley -- by that time a Brevet Major -- was one of the few spared the noose, receiving instead fifty lashes of the whip and being branded with a two-inch letter "D." This was an ironically suitable punishment, inflicted as it was by an Army serving the political interests of the chattel slave lobby.

[As the first commenter below observes, we shouldn't forget that the Mexican government of the time, whose handiwork was visible at Goliad and the Alamo, was a foul and brutal outfit as well.]


The San Patricios are almost entirely unknown on this side of the Rio Grande (an earnest but indifferently produced 1999 film about them did nothing to rescue their story from undeserved obscurity). The Mexican government, a regime nearly as filthy and despicable as the one ruling us, periodically commemorates the San Patricios, trying to poach the credit for the courage and honor those men displayed on the battlefield.


There were American soldiers -- Robert E. Lee, to cite the most obvious example -- who distinguished themselves for valor and leadership on behalf of an ignoble cause. But the only US soldiers who actually fought for freedom in that entire conflict were the supposedly treasonous Irishmen who shed that uniform and took up arms against Washington's invasion of Mexico.


As someone of Mexican-Irish ancestry (I've occasionally advised people, "Don't make me angry, and don't get me drunk"**), I've long wondered about the natural affinity between people of those two very different countries. Catholicism obviously provides a strong bond, as does the fact that both Mexicans and Irish, from my experience and observations, seem to be prone to a fatalistic outlook on life.


What I find truly inspiring about the San Patricios, however, is the fact that those long-suffering men didn't simply surrender to the inevitable. Survivors of a famine and plague engineered by the Empire that occupied and mis-managed their homeland, disillusioned soldiers of a government that was becoming as rapacious as the one they had fled, they still had enough fight in them to do battle on behalf of what they honestly believed to be right in spite of prohibitive odds and the the long drop to the end of a rope that awaited them if they lost.


Chances are that we'll need more than a little of that indomitable pugnacity ourselves, pretty soon.




Obiter Dicta

Yes, this was supposed to be my St. Patrick's Day installment, but I was too busy panicking yesterday to publish it.

If you haven't done so already, I urge you to read Tom Eddlem's account of his experience as a federal juror -- that is, a "wrinkle" to be ironed out in the cause of "justice," as some tax-fed and promotion-hungry prosecutors pretend to understand it. Tom's piece is exquisitely written and terrifically thought-provoking. After you've read it you'll begin to understand why I consider it to be a blessing to have Tom as a professional associate, and an honor to have him as a friend.


On sale now!












Dum spiro, pugno!


_______
*"May God grant peace to his soul," in approximate translation.
** The former is good advice, the latter gratuitous, since I'm a teetotaler.

When Trouble Comes Knocking

You're lounging around your suburban home in pajamas on a Friday afternoon, enjoying a break from your truck driving job, when your wife informs you that a policeman is at the door. Puzzled and a bit annoyed, you greet the officer, who informs you that he spotted an expired license plate tag on a van in your driveway, and is preparing to have the vehicle towed away.

This news triggers a spike of alarmed outrage that dispels the pleasant afternoon torpor.

“This is private property!” you exclaim. “The van isn't working, and we're planning to repair it. It's not been operated on the streets, and you have no right to tow it from here!”

The officer, believing himself clothed in the majesty of what he mistakenly calls the law, insists that under a local municipal “quality of life” ordinance he has the authority to impound your vehicle.

As you angrily but politely defend the sanctity of your property, this agent of the State does what people of his ilk always do: He invokes the ultima ratio regum by pepper-spraying you in the eyes at point-blank range and then beating you to the ground with a club.

Force is the "Last Argument of Kings" (ultima ratio regum), a phrase engraved on French artillery by order of the tyrannical King Louis XIV.

Squirming and screaming in agony, you claw at your eyes as the officer tries to slap the handcuffs on your wrists. In the background your wife and two small children are screaming in horror; after regaining her composure, your wife snaps a few photographs of the assault. Having no other options at the time, your wife then calls the police to report the ongoing assault perpetrated by one of their own.

The officer eventually succeeds in positioning you face-down on the ground, with his knee in your back, compounding the pain and temporary blindness inflicted by the pepper spray as the unyielding steel of handcuffs bites into your wrists. And during the assault, this embodiment of Official Authority leaves the air clotted with the flatulent rhetoric of racial bigotry:

“You f****** Arab! You f***** immigrant, go back to your f****** country before I kill you!”

After being dragged to the police station you are taken immediately to the emergency room, after which you spend five days in the hospital recovering from the beating you received from a supposed Peace Officer.

And as it happens, you are the one charged with “aggravated battery” because you came into physical contact with the police officer during the arrest: Your reflexive reaction to the pepper spray attack caused you to flail about wildly, making it difficult for the assailant to handcuff you. And since the officer represents the Divine State, his person is too holy to be touched by a mundane such as yourself, save under penalty of "law."

Such was the experience of Kuldip Singh Nap, 49, last March 11, as he – along with his wife and children – describe it. Mr. Nap is an immigrant. He is not, however, an Arab, “f*****g” or otherwise, but rather a Sikh. He is also a combat veteran of the first Gulf War. As his wife points out, their family has nowhere else to go, since the United States is – to borrow once again from the preferred idiom of one of Joliet's Finest – their “f*****g” country.

The official police account holds that the officer was calmly trying to explain the "procedure for removing the van" when Nap became upset and pushed him. There are four eyewitnesses who dispute that version.

A few weeks ago, I pointed out that the trend toward “quality of life” (QOL) policing “has sometimes led to replacing the anarchic violence of street criminals (or merely the unsightly spectacle of street beggars) with state-sanctioned violence.... In practice, QOL policing means the ever-increasing presence of armed government agents in the employ of revenue-starved governments, there to enforce often obscure ordinances regulating how you cut your grass, care for your lawn, paint your house, maintain your car, and even feed your dog. And intrusions of this sort can now be justified as a way of helping to keep property values up in your neighborhood -- as if anything you can do would have a bigger impact than the Fed's manipulation of the money supply.” (Emphasis added.)

At the time, I wasn't aware of the incident involving Mr. Nag, which seems like a tragically appropriate illustration of my point.

The Joliet Police Department forcefully rejects the accusation that the officer who assaulted and arrested Nag used racially abusive language. Unfortunately for him, there are, once again, four witnesses – Mrs. Vera Kaur Nag, the two children, and the victim – who can testify that he did. (There was a time – and how desperately I long for it – when policemen who used vulgar language like this, whether or not it involved racial pejoratives, would have been cashiered for a lack of character.)

Even if we set aside that issue, however, a more basic question remains, notes Chicago attorney Paul Chawla, who is representing Nag: “Does a policeman have the right to enter someone's property and tow away a parked vehicle because it has an expired tag?”

“The van was in front of Nag's garage, about fifty to sixty feet away from the street,” Chawla pointed out to me in a phone interview. “It belongs to Mr. Nag's brother-in-law, who was staying with the family, and it needs to be repaired. It hadn't been operated by anybody, and the police officer really had no reason to be there. Think of it this way: If I owned a collection of classic cars and none of them had current license plate tags, could the police come and tow them away? Of course not. They're my property – my antiques on my land. It just doesn't make sense to say otherwise.”

Under the local ordinance, according to several press accounts, inoperable automobiles can be ticketed and towed away. However, observes Rajpir Singh of the Sikh-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF, which is providing assistance to Nag), the officer's actions were not in compliance with established policies.

“This was the first instance, the first notice of any kind Nag received that his van was in violation of the local ordinance,” Singh explained to me. “Since the van had never been ticketed before, the appropriate action would have been to leave a windshield advisory warning that it would be towed within a certain time.” Mr. Nap and his family maintain that this procedure wasn't followed.

All of this brings up another question. As Chawla pointed out to me, the license decal is a tiny rectangle that would have been difficult to spot from the street, even if the policeman had been trolling the neighborhood in search of revenue-generating code violations. Assuming that the officer didn't intrude on the Nag family's property without a warrant or probable cause of any kind, why did that van come to his attention?

“The police apparently received a telephone complaint from a neighbor,” Chawla explains. “We don't know all the details of this yet, and that's something we're hoping to learn through discovery.” Chawla, who lives in the Chicago area, claims that this particular section of Joliet, where Nag and his family have lived for more than three years, “is not all that receptive to immigrants.”

Since I don't live there, I'm entirely unqualified to say whether that assessment of local sentiment is correct. I can point out, however, that this is not the first time a US citizen of the Sikh faith has been mistaken for an “Arab” or a Muslim and been the victim of misplaced racial violence.

On September 15, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi (left) was gunned down at his gas station by Frank Silva Roque (right), who mistook the turbaned Sikh immigrant-entrepreneur for a Muslim. Roque went on to take shots at two others – a man of Lebanese ancestry and an Afghan family – before his shooting spree came to an end. Roque, who had pleaded insanity, was convicted of murdering Sodhi and sentenced to die by lethal injection.

As a Christian believer I have no brief for Sikh theology, and as a supporter of American independence I want no part of the ethnic and ancestral quarrels some Sikhs have with other Indian sub-communities. Having said that, I must say this as well: In the Sikhs I find quite a bit worthy of respect.

The kirpan, or ceremonial double-edged dagger that symbolizes the Sikh faith, contains a meaning that resonates with the moral vision of Christian chivalry: One cutting surface represents the innate right of self-defense, the other the moral duty to defend the weak. Sikh temples are constantly open and ready to feed anyone who is hungry. Baptized Sikhs are required to wear a kirpan, which may be either a large ceremonial sword or a small, harmless piece of jewelry.

Nanak Dev Ji (born in present-day Pakistan in 1469), founder of the Sikh faith, “was raised in a Hindu home, but repudiated Hindu polytheism,” recounted SALDEF's Rajpir Singh for my benefit. “He also rejected Islam, especially what he considered to be its denigration of women. He taught a monotheistic doctrine that emphasized a view of human equality that was very appealing to many who were living in India's caste system, in which your surname defines your status and your future. That's why Sikhs share the surname Singh – it's a statement about equality.”

Because of their distinctive customs and dress – and, more importantly, the way that multiculturalism nurtures such instances of friction into potential bonfires – some Sikhs have found it difficult to adapt to our culture. (A lot of those troubles would evaporate, incidentally, if we were to dispense with the government school cartel.) This isn't true of Mr. Nap, however, since – as noted above – he is a naturalized US citizen who served with distinction in the military before taking up residence in the Midwestern suburb.

Mr. Nag was an immigrant, but he understood the sanctity of private property and due process of law better than the home-grown Americans who are willing to act as enforcers on behalf of our burgeoning garrison state.

Obiter Dicta

The current issue of American Conservative has a cover story, "Globalization Bites," by Yours Truly. The issue should be on newsstands this week. I will be speaking this Saturday at the Spring Convention of the United Republicans of California at the Embassy Suites in Arcadia.


Some very generous people have sent donations to keep this blog up and running; thank you so much. And I want to offer particular thanks for those who have written or called to express concern and support for Korrin. Her health has improved dramatically -- God be praised for it -- and although there's still ample reason for concern, she's doing immeasurably better than I had any reason to hope just a month and a half ago.


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