The Fascists Lose In Italy--Again

Jonah Goldberg's book has provided a clearer, better-focused lens through which to view the world. For instance, it now becomes clear that the recent Italian political earthquake was a victory for the true, classical liberal right, and a major defeat for a resurgence of the smiley-faced fascism that has held much of Europe in its grip for the past decades, despite the defeat of the more virulent forms of it in World War II. Here are the values that won, and lost:

The election campaign itself was the most rigorously fought in Italy since its liberation from Fascist rule in 1944. Berlusconi, often portrayed by the media as something of a clown if not a conjurer of tricks, put the case for a market-based capitalist and democratic system in simple but powerful terms.

His rival, former Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni, leader of the new Democratic Party, succeeded in putting forward the case for a social-democratic system, with the state playing the central role as a distributor of wealth and welfare.

Berlusconi spoke of discipline, family values, hard work and individual generosity. Veltroni countered with his talk of solidarity, sharing and collective compassion.

Text coloration mine. All of the red rhetoric could have come right out of Benito Mussolini's playbook. The green stuff is "right wing."

With this defeat, and the complete political demise of one of the oldest and most extreme fascist movements--the Communist Party--perhaps the Italians have finally laid the old socialist to rest.