The ACLU Talks Too Much

By Bob Tyrrell

"It was my old friend and mentor, Luigi Barzini, who asseverated, "Americans talk too much." He was sitting in the elegant library of his home in Rome. The year was 1978, though I cannot recall the contemporary controversy that aroused him. Luigi's point was that we were wrangling again fortissimo con brio , and he thought our jabbering was obscuring careful thought again. He was a great friend of America. He had been partly educated here. He wrote in both Italian and superb English. In fact, at the time, he was finishing one of his many fine books, "The Europeans." It contains a friendly chapter on the USA full of shrewd insights. He believed we often argued garrulously about things that were not worth arguing about."

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