This is a sign of the times:
In recent months, Italy has experienced a level of economic turmoil that has unsettled people, with some linking the government’s austerity measures to a rash of suicides. There has also been a rise in violence against tax collection offices — mostly carried out by indebted and frustrated taxpayers — as well as against other institutions, like the military and the aerospace group Finmeccanica, which has been singled out by radical groups that pattern themselves after the domestic terrorists that kept Italy under siege in the 1970s and early 1980s.
If Europe descends into violence, maybe America will wake up in time and calculate the civilization is worth its price.
