Despite my appearance (and my name!), I’m half Irish. I’m even a citizen of Ireland (and the U.S. of course) with two of my grandparents–Irish as Paddy’s Pigs–emigrating from County Mayo through Ellis Island to Brooklyn nearly a hundred years ago.
Being raised by a first generation Brooklynite of purely Irish stock, I absorbed a great deal of Irish culture, lore and attitudes. Perhaps that’s why I’m an anarcho-capitalist: Ireland, I have read, had a thousand years of non-centralized, non-coercive government which was peaceful and orderly and had the happy effect of making its untamed population difficult for the English to conquer. I only discovered this fun fact in my adult life, however. What I gleaned of Ireland in my childhood included, among other things, that the Irish, at least our line, were poor. I also got the impression that the English were not.
