Valditara, Concia and the real mistake of the centre-right
The mistake lies in the very idea of creating a committee for relationship education. A statist recipe that sounded like giving in to the request made by Schlein. Paola Sacchi's note
The Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara, indicated by the League, revokes, after the rejection of his own party and the protests of the centre-right, the role of guarantors of Anna Paola Concia, Sister Anna Monia Alfieri and Paola Zerman in the committee for the Relationship education against violence against women. But he says the “project is moving forward”.
The mess this time entirely "made" in the center-right naturally lends itself to a left always on the hunt for fascism and fascists everywhere, even at La Scala , where they shout at the president of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, the vice-premier Matteo Salvini, as if they were the Austrian occupiers, in a film by Luchino Visconti.
But what is the project that Valditara seems to insist on? Do a state education, more or less what Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein had asked for, who is now, understandably from her point of view, attacking the minister? What for TV and newspapers has become the "Concia case", i.e. the former parliamentarian of the Democratic Party, LGBT activist, on whom most of the protests have focused, is in reality also the case of the other two former guarantors from the opposing front. That is, the religious Alfieri and the state lawyer Zerman already nominated by the Party for Life. And elegance would like solidarity to be expressed with all three names, of value, dragged into a surreal controversy.
But the problem is not the names, it is the project itself: the state education that that committee seems to represent. A philosophy that contrasts with the liberal programs with which the center-right presented itself to voters against the left just over a year ago.
The non-activation of the position for Concia, Alfieri and Zerman (also contested, in this case by sectors of the left) is not illiberal; the very idea of the commission sounds illiberal.
The two economists of the League, Alberto Bagnai and Claudio Borghi, both parliamentarians, clearly say that the school should educate and not educate, which is the responsibility of the family. In a post to Sister Monia Alfieri, Borghi says in a friendly way: “You know how much I respect you, but wouldn't it be better to think about teaching mathematics, Italian, history, science, etc. better. and avoid the rest?”. That school should not become a "place for ideologies or indoctrination", but "must be free, a place of training and discussion for the new generations", the head of the Family Department of the League said the other evening Simona Baldassarre. Declaration released by the League, therefore with the stamp of all party officials.
Baldassarre's statement therefore immediately sounded, for those who know the decision-making mechanisms of the League, which has always been more structured than others, as a rejection of Valditara's choices, and in particular of Concia: "Divisive names are not necessary". But, as the editorial director of “Libero Quotidiano”, Daniele Capezzone, immediately wrote in a post the other evening, “The problem is not the choice of Anna Paola Concia, a reasonable and serious person. The problem is the incredible cultural failure on 'affective education'. Boys and girls don't need further indoctrination at school: there has been too much of it for decades, and it would be time to start dismantling it." Capezzone concludes with an “unsolicited opinion: “Liberal-conservatives should not bow to progressive rightsism, nor react by pressing too far to the right on illiberal and anti-historical positions. They should bet on the freedom/responsibility pairing, which concerns parents, not the state." Similar positions to exponents of the League such as Borghi and Bagnai.
The mistake lies in the very idea of creating a committee for relationship education. A statist recipe that sounded like giving in to the request made by Schlein (committee in the school "for emotional relationships") immediately after the Giulia Cecchettin tragedy.
A misstep that denotes an insecurity of the center-right on sensitive issues where, as in a continuous search for symbols, there is oscillation between sponsorships of books or commercials and statist recipes, typical of the left. These are issues on which politics should leave freedom and in any case enter on tiptoe. Especially if you are a government majority with liberal programs in all fields.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/valditara-concia-e-il-vero-errore-del-centrodestra/ on Sun, 10 Dec 2023 07:18:21 +0000.