Ciampi Urges Italian Families to Display the Tricolor in Honor of National Pride
Carlo Azeglio Ciampi always recounts that when he sees the flag flying or hears the Mameli hymn playing, his «legs tremble». He explains that his civic education efforts aim, step by step, to rekindle the same patriotic pride in all Italians, who are often too prone to depression due to a lack of self-esteem.
Now he is giving a new push to this policy of memory. With an appeal that, for its innocence and enthusiasm, goes well beyond a formal duty: «Let us do our part so that in every family, in every home, there is a tricolor to testify to the feelings that unite us, since the days of the Risorgimento».
Response to critics and historical memory
These words remind us of those spoken years ago by Lucia Massarotto, the Venetian woman who challenged the Padanian rallies by displaying the national flag as a sort of antidote to the insignia of the Carroccio, receiving in return harsh invective.
This time, in front of the Head of State, there is no trace of contestation, in Solferino and San Martino, and therefore in the same North that dreamed of «liberating itself». Only the curious absence of the Lega Nord representatives (both those elevated to government positions, like Minister Bossi and the House leader Cè, and the local rank-and-file politicians) is noted as an «offense» by the Olive Tree coalition.
And then there are a few polite signs from the «Garda Social Forum», which insists on the «no to wars», alluding of course to Afghanistan. So: almost everyone agrees on honoring the Fatherland, on the 140th anniversary of independence. And they also agree on recovering the values, starting with those of the Risorgimento, which precisely here marked the beginning of the decline of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Remembrance of the youth and Italian origins
Ciampi reflects on the young people of that time, visiting the war memorial, and in drawing their profile, he shows a nostalgia that seems to call for the moral question to be made ours again. He states that «they were an honest, disinterested leadership class, widespread in every city, town, and region of Italy».
Moreover, he adds, they were «men with different histories and backgrounds», «full of passion». And «many were students guided by their teachers», with a cultural background drawing from figures like Alfieri, Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni, Pellico, Cattaneo.
Names that the president mentions alongside those of D’Azeglio, Cavour, Garibaldi, Ricasoli, Vittorio Emanuele: founders of the fatherland, often evoked in family, because they inspired the choice of a maternal grandfather of his, «who voluntarily, at a very young age, joined the Piedmontese army».
From that movement for Italian freedom, «which was never simply nationalist», the ideals «that found full realization in the republican Constitution» were born.
The value of the Constitution and its interpretation
Yes, precisely the 1948 Charter, which «incorporated the fundamental rights of the person and the citizen as the legal foundation of the “res publica”…». «The first part of the Constitution», the Head of State intones with the tone of issuing a warning, «is the very definition of the Republic, a collective good, of everyone and each one».
A statement that, coupled with the call to rediscover the tricolor as a symbol of a «freedom won by a people who feel united», sounds like a tombstone to any aspirations to modify, correct, or rewrite that text, even its first part.
Remember? Only a few years ago, the Lega Nord, along with other aspirants of the «institutional engineers» of the Pole, spoke about it quite casually, advocating for a Constitutional Convention. In short: today Ciampi’s underlying message seems to imply that the country’s moral repair can pass through any «revision», except that one.