St. Patrick's Day:

A Police Officer's Story (15 min)

I had the pleasure of teaching Western Heritage: Ancient & Medieval at Pepperdine University in Malibu for over a decade. One of the stories I always managed to cover was the story of St. Patrick as told by Thomas Cahill in How the Irish Saved Civilization. The book includes the story of St. Patrick ensconced in the wider story of pagan Ireland and Roman England.

What surprises the students is the story of slavery—what’s been called so-called “white slavery.” Of course, it wasn’t called that back then, because slavery was just slavery. It was ubiquitous all over the world before the Judeo-Christian movement in specific geo-temporal segments of history.

Slavery is still occuring in the United States. People are bought and sold probably every day somewhere in the United States, probably more so now with the Biden border than under Trump.

Here’s a police officer’s story , 15 minutes, on the Street Cop training podcast from St. Patrick’s Day three years ago (the producer of the podcast showed no connection of the story with St. Patrick) of how a well-trained officer made an instinct traffic stop and saved two children from being sold in Kentucky. As you know, the entire brand of the Republican Party was established to end slavery in the United States, at significant social, economic, and human cost (because the Democrats fought the movement so hard; still do).

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Onward.