before national elections in April, I was surprised several times when friends, all intellettuali di sinistra, fashionable leftists, added a new idea to the classic after-dinner political rant. After exhausting the usual laments about Italy's shortcomings, they declared that the only solution was a dictator with a mano forte — the big fist. The idea was that only a unilateral supra-parliamentary force would cut through the mess and "do what all agree must be done" to get Italy out of its economic and spiritual dumps.