Looking Back At March.

This past month was the month of Saint Patrick’s Day and the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Here are some thoughts about both of these events:

The actual history of Saint Patrick is often (obviously) obscured.

There is no problem with the commercialization of Saint Patrick’s day (or for that matter the commercialization of just about anything), except when it comes at the cost of absolutely forgetting the origin of the thing. For instance, there is no problem with Santa Claus as long as the public conscience remembers the events in Bethlehem. And there is no problem with one dollar pints of green beer, unless the public conscience forgets the story of Saint Patrick.

Saint Patrick was born to Roman parents in England. In his teens, he was kidnapped and brought to Ireland. He became a Christian while in captivity. Propelled by his new found faith, he escaped from Ireland back to the continent of Europe. He was then educated as a priest and never really feeling at home again in Rome or England returned to Ireland to convert the island.

Saint Patrick’s history has nothing to do with snakes or even really Irish identity, but for the fact that he brought Christianity to island and thus became the patron saint.

There is no problem with celebrating this holiday with an Irish pint, but to act as if it is a manufactured day just meant for drinking is confusing a day celebrating a Western and Christian hero with…well, Cinco de Mayo.

As for the NCAA Tournament: There have been various attempts at various levels of government to force the NCAA to have a football tournament. A simple look at this year’s basketball tournament tells us why this would not only be needless big government interference, but also just a plain bad idea.

This year's “March Madness” has been entertaining, but no one actually thinks it will produce the best team as its champion. Comparatively, Auburn (or Oregon) this year, Alabama (or Texas) last year and Florida (or Oklahoma) the year before were truly the top of the bunch in football. They were great teams and played great championship games. Do you think anyone will say the same about Virginia Commonwealth in Basketball?

The market has a way of working things out. The bowl system produces the best result for football. March Madness gets people paying attention to college basketball. In football there is a greater interest in having the best two teams play for the title. In basketball there is a greater interest in office pools and brackets and upsets. It works out nicely. The invisible hand at work.

How Quaint.

Whenever the New York Times does a profile on life in DC, it always reeks of “oh how quaint and provincial it is down there." A recent article on well known DC bloggers is no exception.

The bloggers profiled in the following article are arguably famous, but nice and approachable figures around DC. So of course the NYT masterfully overstates their importance in a clever underhanded attempt at making Washington look "Busch League."

“How cute, they run blogs. We have hedge fund managers here.”

I will give the NYT credit though: Many people in DC (sadly maybe some of those mentioned in the article) will take pride in this article and not catch on to the subtle insult.

Washington’s New Brat Pack Masters Media "One winter evening, Brian Beutler, 28, a reporter for the online publication Talking Points Memo, sat with his friend and roommate Dave Weigel, 29, a political reporter for Slate and a contributor to MSNBC, at a coffee shop on U Street. Recovering from a cold as snow fell outside, Mr. Beutler spoke about his younger — well, relatively younger — days in the city. “Everyone’s gotten a little bit older and a little more boring,” Mr. Beutler said, speaking of a wave of Washington bloggers who have come of age together...

... In only a few years, these young men and others like them have become part of the journalistic establishment in Washington. Once they lived in groups in squalid homes and stayed out late, reading comic books in between posts as more seasoned reporters slogged their way through traditional publications like The Hill and Roll Call. Now the members of this “Juicebox Mafia,” as they were first called by Eli Lake of The Washington Times, in a reference to youth, have become destination reading for — and respected by — the city’s power elite...

...There is precedent for such packs of smart, self-important young men in other capital cities. More than 50 years ago, Gay Talese wrote of “the witty, irreverent sons of a conquering nation,” led by George Plimpton, who once tromped through Paris…" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/fashion/27YOUNGPUNDITS.html

John Derbyshire On Fire This Week...

Great broadcast by him. There is a brief section on the budget that is a little slow at the start, but he really gets going after that. A great application of conservatism to current events.

Listen here.

Thought Of The Day.

The cost of a cruise missile being fired on Libya would fund NPR for the better part of a decade.

It is hard to draw conclusions from this...NPR still is a waste and there are decent arguments for intervention in Libya, but it puts things in perspective.

Iona Institute: China Credit's Christianity For Rise Of The West.

Christianity the reason for West's success, say the Chinese

In the West we are doing our best to destroy our Christian heritage but in China, Chinese intellectuals are coming around to the view that it is precisely this heritage that has made the West so successful. Read more: http://www.ionainstitute.ie/index.php?id=1336