Mancuso's Prefacing Comments:

I found great pleasure in reading "A Civilized Society" a piece by Anthony 
Lewis, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a columnist for The New York 
Times, which nicely explains why I enjoy my time in Italy.  Considering the 
constant barrage of negative evaluations of Italy and Italian affairs, I am 
pleased that a person of Mr. Lewis' stature would write a piece like that 
which is here attached.
==========================================                             
A CIVILIZED SOCIETY
        
New York Times
Abroad at Home
By Anthony Lewis
September 8, 2001    
                
            CIVITELLA, Italy -- The forces of the market have conquered the 
political world. East and west, most societies have come to believe that 
competition will produce more prosperity for more people than a planned 
economy. I share that belief.

            But Italy is evidence that there is more to life — a civilized 
life — than the unregulated competition of the market. There are values of 
humanity, culture, beauty, community that may require deviations from the 
cold logic of market theory. So I am convinced after spending some weeks in 
Italy this summer.

            Consider health care. A friend in Italy suffers from multiple 
sclerosis. She is severely handicapped, and she now requires an expensive 
motorized wheelchair. The Italian national health service sent an agent to 
her home to look at her situation and will apparently pay much of the cost.

            She lives in a remote cottage in rough country. Traveling to a 
city for medical checkups is difficult, so the health service regularly sends 
a nurse to visit her.

            Are those wasteful deviations from the logic of the market? Or is 
a society more civilized for everyone if it provides necessary medical help 
for all who need it?

            Americans who visit Tuscany or Umbria love the landscape: the 
silvery olive groves, the fields of sunflowers, the vineyards, the stone 
houses and barns. The farms are mostly modest in size.

            Those farms are to a large degree uneconomic. They continue to 
exist because the European Union subsidizes them through its Common 
Agricultural Policy. It also gives crucial grants to restore beautiful 
villages.

            The Common Agricultural Policy has been denounced for years by 
true believers in pure market principles such as The Economist. The policy is 
undoubtedly costly to taxpayers, and to consumers in higher food prices. But 
would the life of Italy — and France and Germany — be improved if that money 
were saved and corporate agriculture took over? If the landscape were 
transformed by single crops over vast acreage? 

            The look of the Italian countryside is also protected by tight 
legal controls over development. Getting permission to build, or even to move 
a road a few yards, is a struggle. The gross national product might be raised 
a notch if those controls were eased. But would Italians prefer their country 
that way?

            Italy is an easy target for political ridicule. Its bureaucracy 
is notoriously obscurantist. It has had 59 different governments since World 
War II.

            Reform is necessary. But the fact is that the society functions 
extremely well despite those problems. In between the beautiful vistas Italy 
has dynamic industry. Northern Italy is one of the most prosperous regions of 
Europe. And there is a sense of joy in life. That, not the beauty alone, 
appeals to visiting Americans. 

            A number of Italian towns are called Civitella. I stayed in 
Civitella in Val di Chiana, near Arezzo in Tuscany. It is a tiny walled town 
on top of a high hill, population about 250. At one end are the remains of a 
13th-century castle, which was bombed by the Allies as the Germans retreated 
north through Italy in 1944.

            Economic subsidy of one kind or another has helped hundreds of 
such small towns to survive. But there is another factor: community, 
fortified by history.

            There is a tangible sense of community here, as in other small 
towns and urban neighborhoods in Italy. Families sit in their open doorways 
in the evening, or in the narrow streets, and say "Buona sera" to people 
walking by. A small cafe sets tables in the town square for dinner. Small 
children run around, utterly secure, until 10 or 11 o'clock in the summer 
nights.

            The owner of one house was 3 years old in 1944. On June 29 of 
that year there was a knock at the door of the house. When his father opened 
it, a German soldier shot him dead. The Germans gathered all the men of 
Civitella, including the priest, and killed them: 119 men. The town was not a 
center of partisan activity against the Nazis; the massacre seems to have 
been a random response to defeat and retreat.

            An event like that marks the historical memory of a people. 
Plaques honor the martyrs and hail the British Eighth Army, which liberated 
the town soon after. Few Americans have such a sense of place. We are 
immigrants and wanderers, rightly glorying in our diversity. But we respond 
to the power of community when we see it.