Just in case I may have to quote from it in future

[fpb]

The twelve fundamental and unalterable articles that open the Constitution of the Italian Republic:

Art. 1.

Italy is a democratic republic established upon labour.

Sovereignty belongs to the people, who exert it in the forms and within the limits set out by the Constitution.

Art. 2.

The Republic acknowledges and guarantees the inviolable rights of human beings, both as individuals and as members of social groups in which their personalities develop; and [the Republic] demands the fulfilment of inalienable duties of political, economical and social solidarity.

Art. 3.

All citizens have equal dignity and are equal before the law, with no distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political views, and personal and social condition.

It is the task of the Republic to remove those economic and social obstacles which, by limiting in fact the freedom and equality of citizens, prevent the full development of human persons and the effective participation of all working people in the political, economic and social organization of the nation.

Art. 4.

The Republic acknowledges the right of every citizen to work, and promotes conditions that make this right effective.

Every citizen has a duty to carry out, according to their abilities and choices, a function or activity that helps the material and spiritual progress of society.

Art. 5.

The Republic, though single and not to be divided for any reason, recognizes and promotes local government autonomy; it enacts the broadest possible administrative decentralization in all services that depend from the State; it suits principles and methods of its legislation to the requirement of autonomy and decentralization.

Art. 6.

The Republic protects language minorities with appropriate legislation.

Art. 7.

The State and the Catholic Church are, each in their own sphere, independent and sovereign.

Their relationships are regulated by the Concordat of 1929. Modifications of this treaty, when ratified by both sides, do not require a process of constitutional amendment. (NB: the Concordat has been successfully renegotiated in 1988.)

Art. 8.

All religious confessions are equally free before the law.

Religious confessions other than the Catholic Church are entitled to organize themselves according to their own rules, in so far as these rules do not conflict with the Italian legal order.

Their relationships with the State are regulated by understandings negotiated with their legitimate representatives.

Art. 9.

The Republic promotes the development of culture and scientific and technical research.

It is the active guardian of the Nation's natural patrimony and of its historical and artistic inheritance.

Art. 10.

Italy's legal order conforms to the universally recognized rules of international law.

The legal condition of foreigners is set by law in conformity with existing international law and treaties.

Foreigners who are prevented in their own country from effectively enjoying the democratic liberties guaranteed by the Italian Constitution have a right of asylum in the territory of the Republic, on conditions to be defined by a specific law.

It is forbidden to extradite a foreigner for political crimes.

Art. 11.

Italy rejects war as a means of assaulting the freedom of other peoples and as a means of settling international disputes; she consents to such limitations in sovereignty as may guarantee a peaceful and just international order, so long as they equally shared among all partners; and promotes and supports international organizations established to this end.

Art. 12

The banner of the Republic is the Italian tricolour: green, white and red in three vertical bands of equal size. (NB: curiously, no law or constitutional norm has ever been passed for the National Anthem, and, to this day, the song that everyone associates with the flag and the sports teams of Italy - the Anthem of Mameli, "Fratelli d'Italia" - is only the provisional national anthem.)

Comments

[dustthouart.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that the Italian anthem's last verse sings about drinking Polish blood. That's... interesting.

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

Actually, if the translation I'm reading is correct, it sings about how the Austrians (figuratively) drank Italian and Polish blood. It seems to be a denunciation of Austria, not an exhortation to drink anyone's blood.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Exactly. It is also a prophecy of what Italy did in fact do to the Austrian Empire in 1918:
The blood of Italy, the blood of the Poles,
She (Austria) drank, together with the Cossacks;
But her heart burned down.

[dustthouart.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. The translation I was reading was very unclear about its pronouns.

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

Yes, but your Constitution wasn't divinely inspired, because God loves us best.

(That was sarcasm, in case it's not evident. But I am not exaggerating when I say that that really is what many on the American Right believe.)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I know. Ours is a good Constitution, and I am not sorry to have sworn loyalty to it, but if I were to choose, I would change a few things including the prohibition against war. At any rate, that, like the promise to make work open to every citizen, is at best a hope, since, just as it takes one crisis to destroy work for millions, so it only takes one enemy to start a war.

[dustthouart.livejournal.com]

Nero Wolfe says in Death of a Dude that the Declaration of Independence (specifically the bit about all men created equal) was not intended to convince but to confound, and he uses it as a compliment. I have often wondered if that were not true of most of the best of these kinds of documents (constitutions &c).

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I would not use Rex Stout as a guide to politics. (If we were to take his creation seriously, Wolfe would have started his career as a traitor, since Montenegro in the First World War went to war against Austria, and Wolfe was supposed to have been a Montenegrin Austrian agent.)

[dustthouart.livejournal.com]

You remember the first but not the last. The relevant book is The Doorbell Rang; the passage says that he worked as a "boy" for the Austrian forces, but then quit to fight against Austria, but "we ended up fighting machine guns with our fingernails and eating dried grass. I starved to death, but in fact I went on breathing, and then I did something that advanced my maturity but rid me of my illusions, and then I came to America." (I typed that from memory so it may not be verbatim.) The "something" appears to be a disastrous marriage which perhaps caused his legendary gynophobia.

Edit: I may know entirely too much about Nero Wolfe lol. I just realized that I rattled all that off without even needing to think about it.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's good.