The worst of an extremely bad bunch have won

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I have refused to vote in the Italian elections, holding that none of the candidates on offer were worthy of even reluctant consent by a free man. Or by anybody free to choose. To have to choose between supporting Veltroni, Berlusconi or the lesser lists is a choice that demeans a human being, and I will not make it. Until the Italian political

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I am rather surprised that you should challenge me on this matter. Surely you are aware that your experience is scarcely typical of the British state at large. You were raised, so to speak, in an Indian reservation, where practices and attitudes that had been laughed or legislated out of existence in the mainland were allowed to continue for a number of reasons. (Foremost among which being that both "communities" inflicted on the British government and on each other the same kind of "respect" that extreme Muslims have lately been achieving.) I do not have the time to argue this in more depth, although I realize that sooner or later I will, but let me tell you that once you have seen your English friend look around herself and actually drop her voice, as if imparting a dangerous or shameful secret, before she tells you that, yes, she is a Christian, you would not forget it in a hurry. In Italy and in America, the assumption is that being a Christian (or, as we say, credente, a believer) tends to make you a better person; raises your standards, makes demands from you, makes you more willing to forgive and show love. The former is more the emphasis in the USA, the latter in Italy, but it is basically true of both countries. In Britain, on the other hand, it has ineradicable overtones of either infantility or fanaticism or both. Look at the only enduring BBC TV religious program, Songs of Praise, and tell me whether it does not convey by every one of its presentations the idea that religion is essentially a pleasantly infantile refuge for damaged or simple persons.