The White House turns green today as Ireland’s prime minister (Taoiseach) Micheál Martin arrives for his annual St. Patrick’s Day meeting with the president. Every March, Americans put aside political differences and raise a pint of Guinness to the ballads, jigs and reels, and the rolling hills of their common ancestral homeland. In Chicago, the river turns green. In New York, the city shuts down for the largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world. And in Boston – well, Boston is Irish all year round.
The last time the American media reported on Irishmen in Washington was only last month. Free speech expert Lorcán Price and comedian Graham Linehan testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the mass censorship regime sweeping Europe through its big tech hub in Dublin, Ireland. The American nostalgia of St. Patrick’s Day remembers a wholesome, Christian, culturally rich country that is now close to extinction. Ireland today is a left-wing, globalist hub and it offers a warning about the direction left-wing policies will lead the United States if the American Left regains control in Washington. Ireland’s fall from grace demonstrates how unelected bureaucracies and mass-immigration can reshape a nation.
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While Elon Musk’s DOGE made some headway last year in exposing and trimming some of the worst excesses of America’s deep state, Ireland’s deep state is firmly embedded. There are 32,000 NGOs in Ireland — that’s one for every 155 people in the country. Despite the label “non-governmental,” this sector receives $7 billion (€6 billion) every year, not including additional funds from the European Union, USAID, and other governmental bodies around the world.
These organizations, for the most part, implement policies created by the European Union — another unelected bureaucracy — that are passed with little-to-no real scrutiny by the Irish parliament. In fact, according to an Irish member of European Parliament, 70% of Ireland’s legislation is created in this way.
The American Left would love to see that level of unaccountable NGO rule in the United States. The House DOGE Subcommittee found last year that the Biden-Harris EPA had directed $20 billion to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. This provided taxpayer funds to NGOs to implement the Green New Deal. If Republicans lose in 2026, we can expect Democrats to push even larger sums of taxpayer dollars through similar programs with little oversight.
In Ireland, the government openly advertises that it reserves special benefits for illegal immigrants who come to its shores. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Ireland announced it would take in every Ukrainian refugee that arrived at Dublin Airport, with no upper limit. The government still provides housing and a weekly stipend many times larger than any other European country, but refuses to run any background checks on these alleged refugees. Dr. Eoin Lenihan explains in his book, Vandalising Ireland, that between 2022 and 2023, 8,975 individuals arrived in Ireland to seek asylum with no valid identification. Only one was prosecuted.
In 2022, a 23-year-old Irish schoolteacher, Ashling Murphy, was brutally stabbed 11 times in the neck while out for a run. Her murderer, Jozef Puska, was unemployed and receiving funds from a social welfare program. As an EU citizen (Puska moved from Slovakia in 2013), he had an automatic right to live in Ireland, despite being unemployed. Puska was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment, but he remains in the country without a deportation order. Ashling’s boyfriend, Ryan Casey, was accused of “incitement to hatred” by the BBC for raising concern about the unmitigated immigration regime that led to her murder. To date, the system has not been reformed to prevent similar tragedies.
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The United States has seen similar tragedies as a result of the disastrous Biden-era immigration regime. Young girls like Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, and Kayla Hamilton bore the brunt of this policy. A new Democratic administration will certainly re-open the border and cause more pain and suffering, precisely because open borders — not the safety of young women — has become a defining policy priority of the Left.
Ireland’s Christian heritage has been politicized and defeated in a woke crusade. The last decade brought with it a wave of referendums that ripped Ireland’s conservative safeguards out of the constitution. Ireland voted in large numbers to create constitutional rights for same-sex “marriage” and abortion (with no restrictions). In 2024, the ruling parties put forward a vote to remove the word “woman” from the constitution and define “family” as any “durable relationship.” Only in a last-minute polling turnaround that indicated the Irish people are finally waking up to the destruction of their culture, did the government lose the vote. The star of that 2024 campaign, Maria Steen, was unceremoniously blocked from running for President last year.
A nation’s politics necessarily impact its culture. The Irish culture Americans celebrate every March is deteriorating rapidly. The Gaelic language is confined to rural villages, and less than 2% of the population speak it on a weekly basis. This year, the government perverted the celebration of the Irish Catholic St. Brigid by casting her as a pagan goddess. In the aftermath of the George Floyd debacle in Minnesota, Ireland eagerly joined the cancellation spree. Trinity College Dublin “denamed” (renamed) its Berkeley Library, previously named after a significant Irish-born philosopher, due to alleged ties to slavery.
While the United States has never passed a popular vote to create constitutional rights out of thin air, it repeatedly elects politicians who seek to protect made-up rights, misuse the law, and sell out their Christian faith. The last administration attempted to codify Roe v. Wade. It succeeded in codifying parts of Obergefell v. Hodges with bipartisan support in the “Respect for Marriage Act.” Thirty-four felony convictions nearly blocked Donald Trump from the ballot in 2024. In the United States, Christian faith is becoming increasingly politicized. Daily Wire’s Megan Basham has catalogued this bastardization of Christianity in the United States in her book, “Shepherds for Sale.” Renaming libraries and toppling statues has also become common under Democrat governance.
Ireland’s transformation did not happen overnight. It happened through bureaucrats, state-funded NGOs, and cultural elites who slowly replaced national identity with global ideology. Americans celebrating St. Patrick’s Day should remember: the country they toast tonight is not the one that exists today. Ireland shows what happens when elites, bureaucracies, and ideology override national identity. As Americans celebrate 250 years of independence, they should reflect on their own national identity as they head to the ballot box this year. After all, Ireland is the future the American Left wants.
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Roger Berkeley works with mission-driven organizations to develop their political and communications strategies. Now based in Washington, DC, Berkeley has been politically active in his native Ireland since 2016, driving change on free speech and life issues.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
