breakfast at murrayfield

I can’t stand this country’s ridiculous politicians anymore.

Latest news is Lega Nord, the ones who want a secession, yep, that’s them (every now and then someone should remind them that it was the House of Savoy, id est *their* then king Vittorio Emanuele II who wanted Italy united in the first place “to establish a united kingdom encompassing the entire Italian Peninsula”. Heh.), now suggesting to put (back) a cross on the Italian flag.

(There was one before, when Italy was a kingdom, as it was the standard of the House of Savoy — same House of Savoy that was banned from Italy after WWII, by the way. But — breaking news! — we’re a democratic republic now! We’ve allegedly been one since 1946, so go figure…)

But as a Christian I think respect towards *everybody* is the first thing, and these people more often than not show none of that respect, and putting a cross onto a flag surely won’t change things.

At risk of sounding like a lame catechism teacher, which I’m not, there you go — Matthew 22:35-40:

Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Suppose that makes sense even to non-believers — I mean the “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” bit, as if they don’t believe they of course will skip the “love the Lord thy God” bit, but that’s alright, because you can’t talk people into believing, you can’t shove a belief into them, it would be just plain wrong — and, above all, believing in God doesn’t make anybody better than anybody else. We’re all equal. It’s what you actually do that matters, not what you pretend to be or just say you are. If you say that you’re a believer and then behave like a moron, believing doesn’t make you a better moron, you’re still a plain one.

And similarly, you can’t restate a nation’s alleged “Christian roots” by putting a cross unto a flag, especially when you turn it into a hatred symbol and skip the “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” bit. It doesn’t say “”thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself but only if they’re Christians, even better if Catholic, ‘cos Roberto Castelli and his mates say so”, it just says “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” — all the rest is just rubbish, just like Switzerland, complete with their flag-with-cross, when they claim fear of “Islamization”.

Oh, and speaking of a cross… happy St Andrew’s Day, everybody!