This gargantuan fellow was out at the hermitage, a Great American Hornet that is also called the European Hornet. There’s a controversy about this. Apparently everyone calls them only European Hornets. You have heard that it was said: “European hornets are the only true hornets native to the U.S.” Stare at that. Native. To the U.S. If that’s true, then can we not say that “The Great American Hornet, truly native to the U.S., is also native to Europe.” That’s my view of it from the hermitage. Making Hornets Great Again, and all that.
Meanwhile, Jesus has stood in our place, the Innocent for the guilty – for all human beings from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Jesus redeemed all. We do what we can that the many be saved also from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
In the face of that, can we be so proud of one nation over another? Well, yes, but on other levels. Those other levels, be they political, economic, social, linguistic, artistic, etc., are appraised not by relativistic standards – which is what most all do – but rather appraised by mercy founded on justice, on respect for the individual as necessary to the common good, on honesty and integrity about who we are before God, where conditions of whatever nation are either a help to the free exercise of true religion, of the sacraments, or not.
No individual is better of himself more than another individual of himself. We all stand subject to original sin and whatever of our own rubbish sin, and all of that is responsible for the death of the Son of the Living God.
This not being better thing is also true with time. We’re not better today than those of the past just because we live today. No.
Having said all that, and having been in – if I remember rightly – some 26 countries, it is America which is, in my not so humble opinion, far and away the best country, the greatest country. I’m NOT saying that there are sins against life, against justice, against reason, against mercy. There are. But the Constitution we have is soooo much better than dialectical materialism, etc.
I am patriotic. I’m a proud American.
Thanks, dad, for helping me to understand. Thanks for taking me to all those 4th of July parades when I was a little kid. To all the fireworks shows. Thanks for showing me around Northeast Virginia, Washington D.C., all around this great country of ours.
