PERSPECTIVErnHanging With Our Friendsrnby Thomas FlemingrnAyear and a half ago, Umberto Bossi delivered a brilliantrnspeech in t:he Italian parliament. Describing Italy’s politicalrns stem as organized corruption, the leader of the Lega Nordrndeclared that left and right showed two faces but were joinedrninto one body. A new Italian regime had to be born, but thisrntvo-headed monster, he declared, could not make it throughrnthe birth canal. Either the heads had to be separated, or thernnew Italy would have to be born by Caesarian section.rnEen though few of the deputies caught the hint that Bossirnintended to declare the independence of Northern Italy, thernwere outraged by his description of right and left as corrupt collaboratorsrnin a regime whose only function was to despoil therntaxpayers. In plain English, Bossi was saying that either Italyrnwould find a way of breaking up the pow er cartel established byrnthe responsible left and the respectable right in combination—rnand therefore liberate both sides to be themscKes—or elsernmore drastic means would be necessary.rnItalian history parallels our own experience to a large degree.rnIn its most brilliant periods, Italy was a patchwork quilt of citystates,rnkingdoms, dukedoms, and papal appendages. Betweenrn1859 and 1869, however, the statesmen of tiny Piedmont,rnthrough a series of strategic alliances and double-dealing, managedrnto unify ItaK, establishing the kind of unitary state createdrnin France and Prussia and imitated by the Lincoln regime inrnthe United States.rnThis Italian state, which barely survived Worid War I and therneconomic crisis that ensued, was reforged by Mussolini as a nationalistrnquasi-socialist regime in the 2()’s and 30’s, and afterrnWorld War II, this same national-socialist state «’as ruled by arnrevolving door of center-right and center-left politicians backedrnby the Mafia and the CIA—or is that redundant?—until itrnreached the point of collapse and exhaustion in the 1990’s.rnAmericans can tell the same story, of a federal patchworkrnbeaten into the form of a unitary state during the 1860’s, reforgedrnas national socialism in the 19?0’s b an admirer of thernDuce, and consolidated by corrupt politicians of center rightrnand left in the postwar period. In our own case, this transformationrnwas even more tragic, since it took place not in a countr’rnruled b’ foreign monarchs, but in a free republic.rnBut there is one other essential difference. In Italy, the corruptrnregime of the partitocrazia is being resisted on severalrnfronts: by the free market liberals in Silvio Beriuseoni’s ForzarnItalia; by the Alleanza Nazionale, which promises to clean thern.ugean stables of Italian politics; and by the Lega Nord, whosernleaders hae alternated between calling for a S\iss confederalrnsystem and demanding independence for Padania.rnHere in the United States, however, where Bossi’s metaphorrnof the two-headed monster is a perfect description of our ownrnsystem, there is little effectic opposition to the regime. Therernis a conserx ati’e movement, and a conservative wing of the RepublicanrnPart, and every four ears they ask us to support a corruptrnand evnical politician as the lesser of two evils. Since therneariy 1980’s, the conserxatiye movement has tended increasinglyrnto act as an echo chamber for the left. The voices may bernsofter and distorted, but the message is the same: more governmentrnat higher levels, less freedom for indi iduals and localrncommunities, and a relentless pursuit of global empire that villrnend up destroying the liberties of everone on the planet.rnConser’atives are by their nature inclined to nostalgia. Theyrnare like the Southerner that Oscar Wilde described. When Oscarrnadmired the beauty of the moon, the old gentlemanrnreplied, “Yes, but you should have seen it before the war.” Everythingrnw as better in days gone by, we like to believe, and oncernupon a time there \’as an organized and principled resistance tornthe New Deal regime.rnThe mv th of a conservative golden age is comforting but perilous.rnApart from businessmen who defended their self-interestrn(and the journalists they hired), the American experiment inrnnational socialism has, for the most part, gone unopposed, andrnsince December 7, 1941, there has been no organized and de-rn10/CHRONICLESrnrnrn