Nationalist Retirement Home Skit

[setting bingo game -- desks in a row, Trevor using podium]

[each person introduces self (Read name cards)]

BISMARCK: [calls out random bingo numbers] B5! I29! O72!

MAZZINI: BINGO! This reminds me of the time when my Romantic Republican

friends and I almost unified Italia and attempted to eradicate those Austrians.

CAVOUR: Almost is the key word. I was the one who unified the Italian nation.
Thanks to economic and material progress, not your silly romantic ideas.

NAPOLEON III: But you had help! You brought your Italian troops to help us in the
Crimean War so that you would gain French sympathies. Then my country would help
you drive off the Austrians.

BISMARCK: I went to Austria once and I ate sausages. [waves sausage]. This reminds
me of something I always say, "Laws are like sausages, you never want to see them being
made." [pause] ...I was once a reactionary, but over time I realized that conservatism is
the way to go.

DISRAELI: Speaking of conservatism, I played a large role in the development of the

modern Conservative Party in Britain while I was working in Parliament, especially when
I was Prime Minister.

KOSSUTH: Bah! Conservatism. I inspired Hungarian independence and revolts in

Vienna. LONG LIVE MAGYAR NATIONALISM!

[Bismarck looks threatening w/ sausage]

CAVOUR: You remind me of those revolutionary nationalists who FAILED like

Mazzini. I unified Italy through diplomatic means. Haha!

MAZZINI: Well, I organized Young Italy, an organization dedicated to unifying the

Italian peninsula. I was the most important nationalist leader in Europe, known
worldwide for instigating revolts and being imprisoned many times.

CAVOUR: Well, your revolts were preventing Italy from being unified until I crushed
them. Only a constitutional monarchy could have solved that Italian problem.

DISRAELI: Britain has a constitutional monarchy! I always say, "As a general rule, the
most successful man in life is the man who has the best information." Clearly, Britain is
the most informed AND the most successful because we thought to have a constitutional
monarchy first!
KOSSUTH: Well, the Hungarian government wasn't as great as that of Great Britain.
And it was for this reason that I wrote for liberal nationalism when I worked as a
journalist. I demanded reform and argued for the Magyars while I was a journalist, and
later, my ideas inspired the Hungarian people to rise up, for the cause of liberty!

BISMARCK: Liberty is great! But it's another one of those abstract words. What does
liberty REALLY mean? I think it means....UNIFICATION! Which is why I, the "Iron
Chancellor" and Realpolitik, was the statesman who inspired nationalism and the
unification of the German states into one state.

NAPOLEON III: I too, believe in unification. But France was already unified through
revolutions...multiple times. I was the first president, aka dictator, and last monarch of
the Second French Republic. I crowned myself dictator on the 48th anniversary of my
uncle Napoleon's coronation. We had so much in common! It was all wonderful...until I
was captured at the Battle of Sedan in the Franco-Prussian War.

MAZZINI: I know something that we can all agree on! Nationalism! One of my
favorite quotes by myself is, "Nationality is the role assigned by God to a people in the
work of humanity. It is its mission, it's task on Earth, to the end that God's thought may
be realized in the world!"

CAVOUR: I agree! I'm glad we're all nationalists and that we can come to a consensus
on that, even if we disagree about policies and in our political views. Now I think it's
time for lunch. I hear that we're having...

BISMARK: [cuts-in] SAUSAGES! Let's go!

THE END