Rod Dreher.
The American Conservative.
Oct 29, 2022.

In maiden parliamentary speech, new Italian PM cites St. Benedict, St. John Paul II, and Sir Roger Scruton.

The new Italian prime minister gave her maiden speech to Parliament yesterday, and it was magnificent. Here is a link to the transcript in Italian. I’ve google-translated some passages. Excerpts:

Italy is fully part of the West and its alliance system. Founding state of the European Union, the Eurozone and the Atlantic Alliance, member of the G7 and even before all this, cradle, together with Greece, of Western civilization and its system of values based on freedom, equality and democracy; precious fruits that spring from the classical and Judaic Christian roots of Europe. We are the heirs of St. Benedict, an Italian, the main patron of the whole of Europe.

She had me at “St. Benedict.” More:

We know that the protection of the natural environment is particularly important to young people. We will take care of it. Because, as Roger Scruton, one of the great masters of European conservative thought, wrote, “ecology is the most vivid example of the alliance between who is there, who has been there, and who will come after us” .

Protecting our natural heritage commits us just like protecting the heritage of culture, traditions and spirituality, which we inherited from our fathers so that we could pass it on to our children. There is no more convinced ecologist than a conservative, but what distinguishes us from a certain ideological environmentalism is that we want to defend nature with man inside. 

Combining environmental, economic and social sustainability. Accompanying businesses and citizens towards the green transition without surrendering ourselves to new strategic dependencies and respecting the principle of technological neutrality. This will be our approach.

Her final words:

On the day our Government swore an oath in the hands of the Head of State, the liturgical memorial of John Paul II took place. A Pontiff, a statesman, a saint, whom I had the privilege of knowing personally. He taught me a fundamental thing, which I have always treasured. “Freedom” he said “does not consist in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we must”. I have always been a free person, so I intend to do what I have to.

There’s more. Read it all

— See also Is the West Worth Defending? By Joseph Pearce

— What Next for Populism? Brendan O’Neill and Benjamin Teitelbaum