Watching what is going on in Minneapolis and what has gone on in LA and other places in the United States, I’m almost tempted to think that I no longer inhabit the United States of America. Nazi Germany? The Gulag Kingdom, formerly known as the Soviet Union?

How did we get here and where are we going?

We used to be proud of the description of America as a nation of immigrants. Now, the children of immigrants, many of my generation are, anticipate that emigration may well replace immigration as the American dream.

Itnever used to be like this.

On that dark day in November 1963 when our President was gunned down in an American city, we grieved, and perhaps despaired, but we never lost sight of America as the City On The Hill, serving as a beacon of hope to the world.

As recently as September 2001, when thousands of Americans, many first-generation immigrants, were the victims of a foreign invasion by real terrorists (not the made-up kind we hear about today), Americans grew tighter as people.

I look back on those events not because they were the “good old days,” but rather because they illustrate what being an American used to mean in a historical sense.

We didn’t enter the World Wars because we wanted to brag to our allies that they couldn’t have won those wars without us, while failing to recognise the massive contributions and casualties absorbed by our friends until we finally joined the battle fray.

Wilson and FDR were too respectful to even think those thoughts.

The notion that NATO is ripping us off is laughable, but only to those who ever read a history book.

In 1962, when America was faced with the Cuban Missile Crisis, my mother would have us all kneel down in our living room and say the Rosary.

We are beyond the time when we should have been praying for our nation…but it’s never too late to start.

Amen.