Political Quotes

“this past Saturday was St. Patrick's Day. The city of Chicago celebrated, as it has every St. Patrick's Day since 1962, by dyeing the Chicago River a deep emerald green. In the Windy City and in cities and towns throughout Illinois, across America, and around much of the world, people wore green and attended St. Patrick's Day parades and parties. No nation--including Ireland herself--celebrates St. Patrick's Day with as much enthusiasm as Americans do. Whether your ancestors came to this country from Dublin or the Dominican Republic, from Galway or Greece, on March 17, as the saying goes, everyone is Irish. But America didn't always love the Irish. From the middle of the 19th century and well into the 20th century, it was not uncommon for employment ads in America to carry the warning: ``No Irish Need Apply.'' In 1857, Harpers Weekly asserted that ``nearly 75 percent of our criminals and paupers are Irish . . . [and] 75 percent of the crimes of violence committed among us are the work of Irishmen.'' Irish immigrants had been an integral part of America since our earliest days as a nation. Nine of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence were Irish Americans. They included four men who were born in Ireland. And Irish Americans fought and died in the Revolutionary War to secure America's freedom from England. The Irish who came to America beginning in the mid-1840s, however, were different than the earlier arrivals from Erin's shores.…”