Giorgia Meloni should inspire American conservatives

Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party were swept into power in elections this weekend, a development that the media complex in America greeted with all the subtlety of a bird smacking into a sliding door. The New York Times managed to call her a “fascist” 28 times in a single article. Meloni stands to become Italy’s first female prime minister — but I suppose it’s only good for women to break glass ceilings if they’re the correct kind of women.

Even the Times is forced to admit, through gritted teeth, that Meloni supports Ukraine, not Vladimir Putin; that she has supported Italy’s continued participation in the European Union; that she has distanced herself from Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban; that she’s consistently supported elections, so that “undermining democracy” schtick won’t stick. They are reduced to citing her fandom for Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkien’s other writings — the latest depiction of which, in case you missed it, is now streaming on Amazon.

Despite all this, Meloni will now be placed in line with the other lazy list-based “trend” pieces that lead the likes of Jake Tapper to invite Emmanuel Macron to criticize populist, nationalist movements around the world, as if they are all the same, everywhere — itself revealing the limiting bias of the globalist view. How convenient it is to use words without having to define their meaning.

How much Meloni will be able to achieve is questionable. Her coalition — which includes scandal-ridden former PM Silvio Berlusconi and the much further right Matteo Salvini — will have its own challenges. As Jacob Heilbrunn notes, “Given the turbulent nature of Italian politics and the tawdry character of her political allies, she’ll be lucky if she can hold her coalition together for six months.”

But in a more humble view, from the American perspective, what Meloni represents is a challenge to the rhetoric of Republicans and social conservatives. Her speech to the conservative World Congress of Families from 2019 went viral, and it’s worth watching in full given the resonance of its topics for today’s American culture wars.

In it, Meloni decries abortion, puberty blockers, and the renting of wombs by gay couples, while also advocating for vast increases in government support for pregnant women and those who choose to be stay -at-home mothers. She calls for incentives to increase the birthrate and bring down the number of abortions, and issues a stark defense of the family, closing with a G.K. Chesterton quotation: “We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four.”

Have you ever heard an American conservative politician give such a bracing address? There is a fundamental clarity to the vision Meloni presents that is applicable to the current US political experience in the post-Dobbs world. It is not deceptive, or hiding behind spin. It represents a reorientation of the mission of government toward sustaining families and encouraging their formation.

Meloni may well fail to bring about the level of change she advocates for Italy. Her coalition partners have ambitions and long knives. But her rhetoric on the family provides a glimpse of what the next era of American conservatives could adopt — one that sets them on a path toward policies that envision an America that believes in herself, and her future.