`GLASS-HALF-EMPTY' THOUGHTS ABOUT CLONES

When we last checked in with Benito Mussolini, he was hanging bat-like in a Milan square and getting the stuffing beat out of him by irate Italians. Most politicians find it traumatic enough to be escorted from office by voters.

Despite the abrupt and untidy manner in which he left official life -- bullet-riddled, publicly humiliated and killed by his countrymen -- Mussolini enjoyed a pretty good run as leader of Italy.

While his methods might have been harsh (depending on your views of murder, exile and concentration camps) and he picked the wrong friends in world conflict, it is said Mussolini used his 21 years in power to reduce unemployment and improve the railroads. Such a friend of the working man could still get elected in Michigan.

Just when you thought it was safe to hold democratic ideas in Italy, an election Sunday produced a startling success for Alessandra Mussolini.

Il Duce redux.

The 30-year-old granddaughter of the Italian dictator (and niece of actress Sophia Loren, that old socialist) forced a runoff election in the Naples mayoral race with a mainstream opponent.

A starlet before deciding to follow in the family business, Ms. Mussolini accepted gladly the ballot "advantage" of name recognition, saying her name "represents immortal values that cannot be canceled."

It is true that tyranny has a long shelf life.

In fact, no one of Ms. Mussolini's party persuasion, called the Italian Social Movement and until recently a fringe political player, makes an effort to distance that particular philosophy from that of its ideological forebear, the strung-from-the-heels Benito.

They believe the same things and even demonstrate the stiff-armed Fascist salute at parades. They have abandoned the uniforms, however, in favor of business suits and designer fashions.

Thus comes the worst of all worlds: the Fascists are back as yuppies. Along with plans of despotism, they'll drown those fine Italian wines as spritzers.

Since the new movement is so unabashedly fixed to the past, this new breed of Fascist doesn't get the benefit of an excuse that heirs aren't answerable for the sins of their ancestors. Somewhere out there, an unassuming soul named Carl Hitler or Reggie Oswald is trying to lead a productive life and live down a bad family connection.

While some research hints that criminal attributes are congenital, it is not automatically the case that the kinfolk of dangerous characters will behave dangerously. It's possible the first cousin of David Koresh is meek as a lamb.

Still, would you send your child to the Jed Dahmer School for Tykes knowing Uncle Jeff might have inspired the proprietor?

Beyond these bloodline questions is the uncomfortable reality that scientists believe it possible to clone human genetic makeup ... in other words, replicate a person using the basic building blocks of existence. If it can be done once, it can be done a million times. If one Charlie Manson doesn't do the trick for whatever scientist cooks up his twin, then a million can be invented, fertilized in a laboratory and unleashed on the planet.

In this season of peace and good will, one might lambaste such a notion as "glass half-empty" thinking. If cloning is possible, why isn't it possible that great artists, sublime thinkers and world peacemakers would be reproduced?

Obviously, that could happen, but as is the case with nuclear weapons, it only takes one bomb and one nut controlling it to put the world in a nervous state. Remake all the Mozarts and Lincolns and Einsteins you want, but make sure no one scraped any DNA from Ayatollah Khomeini's sorry corpse.

To look at the bright side, however, the cloning of Don Louis Lorimier would have been the ultimate bicentennial stunt in Cape Girardeau. As a matter of ceremony, though, it would have been necessary to parade him around the city he founded without letting him get too close to a microphone.

Coming from a day when sound bites were not politically astute but just the product of strong, silent types, the Lorimier clone might take it upon himself to dishonor the floodwall, bad-mouth ward representation and voice indifference about the middle-school concept. We desire our clones to be a little more deferential.

Anyway, if people around the world hope history doesn't repeat in the case of Alessandra Mussolini, she is probably anxious for the same thing. She and her comrades might be wrong-headed, but they aren't bulletproof. And hanged upside on public display is no way to punctuate a political career.

Maybe Ms. Mussolini should return to acting. If things go wrong there, she could get a stunt double to handle the lynch mob scene.

Ken Newton is editor of the Southeast Missourian.