Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Something nice about Italians.

I'm gonna consider making Antonio Gramsci one of my heroes. He was Sardinian, and one of the founders and a leader of the Italian Communist Party in the 1920s. Gramsci was jailed in 1926 by the Benito Mussolini fascist regime. His health declined in prison. He died in 1937, at age 46. Gramsci started as a socialist, and ended as a communist. And I share many of the views he expressed as a writer, a politician, a political theorist, a linguist and a philosopher. Gramsci is still revered in his native Sardinia. In the very city where I am spending the winter. Carbonia's main street is named after Gramsci. I'm attracted to Gramsci because he worked for the common good. Initially, he focused on grievances of impoverished Sardinian peasants and miners. There's something nice about Italians. When it comes to politics, they seem to show some degree of respect for socialists and communists. Certainly more so than do Americans. Give me a socialist any day over a devout American-style capitalist or lunatic-fringe Republican. --Jim Broede

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