Italian bravery

The Italians are very strange. They have not fought a war well or bravely in at least 400 years, but individually they often retain more of the old virtus or pride in manly excellence than any other Europeans. So Quattrocchi told his Islamist tormentors "I'll show you how an Italian dies," ensuring that he would not suffer an ignominious beheading by short blade. And in Germany in World War 2, Janet Flanner describes a similar instance:

Below the Gestapo office was a small sub-basement cell where, the Klingelputz prisoners said, the Gestapo had hung other prisoners six at a time by crowding them a row, standing them on stools, dropping nooses around their necks from an overhead bar, and then kicking the stools out from beneath their feet. One Italian became a legend by kicking his stool loose himself and shouting, as his final strangled words, "Viva l'Italia! Viva la liberta!"

How is Italy often so inspiring at the level of individual men and, once for a century or so, at the level of cities, but so pathetic as a nation? They are getting on to 140 years of governing themselves, more or less, but only recently have had any success, in the implausible form of Berlusconi. It would take most Western nations 140 years to decline to the point where Berlusconi would be welcomed for his good governance.

Not that I am inciting anti-Italian bigotry; I am a quarter Italian, have met my Italian relatives, love Italy, and admire ancient Rome without wanting Italy to be Roman. Even so, it is a remarkably incompetent nation-state.