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Posted on 01/08/2012 4:37:42 PM PST by decimon
Back when I was even younger, and living in Rome, the main topic of conversation was of course Communism. Italy had the largest Communist Party outside the Soviet Union, and it was forever on the cusp of becoming the biggest party in Italy, thus forming the government, thus taking over. (Marginal comment for those who aren’t up on 20th century Italian political history: it never happened).
Although the deep thinkers at the European and American universities were eager for the West to lose its “inordinate fear of Communism” (a phrase conceived by then-National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and pronounced by Jimmy Carter in an unfortunate speech at Notre Dame early in his first and last term), most of the Italians I knew were very much concerned (they would have to endure it, while the American intellectuals could stay safely in the States and comment on it), and while many intellectuals dreamed of a reformed “Communism with a human face,” everyone in Italy knew that the model for a Communist Italy was the USSR itself.
Back then — we’re talking mid-to-late seventies — the hot topic was “Eurocommunism.” An amazing number of highbrows were convinced that Western Communists, such as the Italians, were capable of being democratic, pro-NATO, and even anti-Soviet. The unfortunate Zbig was one of them, as were almost all the “scholars” at Harvard gathered around Stanley Hoffman. Those of us who knew the Italian Communists first hand (local party HQ were a few doors down from us, and we knew them well) were harder to enchant, and when Washington Post owner and one of her star journalists, James Hoagland, came to Rome to praise Italian Communist leader Enrico Berlinguer, we were appalled.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
And I was just about to ping you to this one.
You’re quick.
Totalitarianism cannot be reformed any more than cancer can.
Hillary's the one doing this work, not Obama. The busy little bee is using her Secretary of State position to create WWIII.
The astonishing thing is how many millions of her vicious hyena "army" think that they will be exempt from the result - or that she actually gives a damn about their wellbeing. What a farce.
Reminds me of Wretchard's Three Conjectures.
That metaphor makes no sense.
Is he suggesting The Won will make a peace treaty with Iran and then invade them?
That headline needs a one word edit.
The headline with a one-word edit was in Post 2.
That metaphor makes no sense.
Is he suggesting The Won will make a peace treaty with Iran and then invade them?
I believe he detects in Obama the totalitarian impulse of kindred spirits. That Obama believes he is the Won to strike a deal with the Iranian regime.
IMO, this is overwrought but Ledeen still wrote a good piece.
I was surprised when I found out that the main street in Turin (Torino) is “Soviet Union Street”.
No matter. Folks either already know it, or are waking up to it.
With respect to the deletion of what is nothing more than common sense borne of a modest knowledge of history and human nature - I wonder how many people here get the irony in my tag line?
The remedies are similar, are they not?
They differ only in scale.
Thanks decimon.
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