Heck of a Speech, Ma'am

Now you're talking. Her name is Giorgia Meloni.

I expect her references to 'speculators' will be said to be anti-Semitic, especially since she is openly Catholic and Christian. That was likely enough a hundred years ago when Europeans spoke of speculators, bankers, or even capitalists; these days it's not a code word for a race or a religious group, because there are speculators from all over the world. The objection to them undoing sources of human dignity as a way of making us rootless and helpless before wealth and power is reasonable. 

She mentions how she is no longer allowed to be a mother, just 'Parent 1' or 'Parent 2.' I actually just filled out a Federal form today that insisted on using that exact formula for me and my wife. 

UPDATE: A report from the opposition on their interpretation of your interpretation of this person many of you, like me, hadn't heard of before yesterday.

In the way of such things, I gather that 'most far-right leader since Mussolini' must have gone out in a distribution list as the approved way to describe her: the line appears here also, as well as 'first fascist PM since Mussolini.' So must have 'anti-LGBTQ' rather than 'pro-traditional family.' I didn't hear in the clip anything about gay rights, either for or against them; I did hear her talk emphatically about being a mother and not just a number.

Of perhaps greater interest, she's a big Tolkien fan. That piece of writing is around twenty-five years old, when she was quite young, so don't judge it too harshly. If she found her way from a youthful embrace of Tolkien and his fantasy to full-fledged Catholicism, she followed a well-worn path that was exactly what he'd hoped people would find in his work.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And finishes with a quote from Chesterton. Beautiful.

CharlesH