Why the left hates Berlusconi
Michael Ledeen takes apart the left’s carping about Italy’s Prime Minister Berlusconi. Their complaint, he points out, is a simple one: they are losing. My favorite bits:
As for the celebrated conflict of interest, yes, it is unseemly and perhaps it is even undemocratic in some way for the head of the government to have his own TV channels. But you have to look at the situation in context. Prior to Berlusconi, all Italian television was state-owned, which is to say it was under the control of the government. Which is to say that every Italian prime minister, like virtually every other head of government in the Old World, had the very same conflict of interest as Berlusconi.
. . .
I think the biggest reason for the near-unanimous attack on Berlusconi is that he’s often had the courage to speak the truth when the rest of the Eurocrats were cowering behind the conventional wisdom. Two examples stand out. The first was at a European conference shortly after 9/11, when Berlusconi said that Western civilization was clearly superior to the Islamic version. We had freedoms that they did not, we were tolerant and they were not, and we were more creative and more wealthy and more productive. The roof fell in, he was written off as a hopeless paleolith, and he even backed off somewhat.
The second example took place a couple of weeks ago, when he went to Israel and, faced with the usual choice, opted to meet with Sharon instead of Arafat. Not only, but he signed a defense agreement with the Israelis, and then permitted himself a bon mot at the expense of Chirac. Berlusconi had nothing good to say about Palestinian terrorism, and noted that Chirac, by siding with the Palestinians, had “missed a good occasion to remain silent.” It will be recalled that Chirac had blasted the “new” European countries for supporting the United States before Operation Iraqi Freedom, and had tried to intimidate the Central Europeans by saying they had missed the opportunity to shut up.
UPDATE: Tim Blair has more, throwing some abuse at the crybaby leftists who started the fight, and are now crying about being picked on.