The Fallaci Crunch

The American Enterprise mag has printed a recent talk by renowned journalist Oriana Fallaci. The speech, titled "How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost," is based on her anti-Islam recent "sermon" (her term), The Rage and the Pride.

Whatever you can say, La Fallaci (again, her term) is doing her best to keep alive stereotypes of Italians as hot-blooded, impulsive, and vendetta-prone:

I, too, am ready to die for passion. But around me, I see no passion. Even those who hate me and attack me and insult me do this without passion. They are mollusks, not men and women. And a civilization, a culture, cannot survive without passion, cannot be saved without passion.

Her pantheon of Western heroes also includes a couple of questionable members:

My book is also a j?accuse. To accuse us [in the West] of cowardice, hypocrisy, demagogy, laziness, moral misery, and of all that comes with that. The stupidity of the unbearable fad of political correctness, for instance. The paucity of our schools, our universities, our young people, people who often don?t even know the story of their country, the names Jefferson, Franklin, Robespierre, Napoleon, Garibaldi. And no understanding that freedom cannot exist without discipline, self-discipline.

Jefferson, Franklin, even Garibaldi–sure. But Robespierre and the Little Corporal Who Could? Ugh.