IT'S HARD TO BE AN AMERICAN :

Here's the best moment from last night's Booknotes (Beppe Severgnini, Ciao America! An Italian Discovers the U.S.) :

LAMB: You say that Italians don't copy the important things in American life, patriotism, optimism, and a sense of personal responsibility. Instead, they copy vocabulary, soft drinks, jeans, hairstyles, film, songs... [...] Why do they copy one thing and not another in your opinion?

SEVERGNINI: The answer is easy because the things that you mentioned first, personal responsibility, patriotism, good patriotism, sense of your duty, commitment. They need effort. You really have to work hard to achieve those.

The other things that America sells extremely well, not only to Italy, but to all over the world and some of them, not all of them, some of them are not appreciated everywhere but nonetheless sold extremely well from Japan to Africa, from Southeast Asia to South America. Those things are easy. All you need is a credit card or your currency and you buy those things, easy.

Unfortunately, those hard things are the very aspects of the culture that the Left most consistently attacks, precisely because thay are hard to achieve and not everyone can measure up. What a shame it would be to sacrifice them on the altar of equality and become like Europe. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 29, 2002 3:52 PM