This list has seen a number of threads on Pound's politics, but I have to say that I've been more than a little surprised by some of the recent claims. Yes, Pound praised Thomas Jefferson and said he believed in the Constitution. In itself that means nothing: the ACLU, Pat Buchanan, the students at Tiananmen Square and Timothy McVeigh have all done the same. Lester Bangs once said all speed freaks are liars, because anyone who talks that much can't tell the truth all the time. A similar situation obtains in Pound's work: he wrote so much that through selective quotation one could construct any number of political positions for him. It seems absolutely clear to me that (as En Lin Wei as suggested) the key to Pound's political beliefs is his Confucianism, and that this Confucianism is deeply skeptical of representative democracy and deeply sympathetic to powerful and even totalitarian individuals and elites. That's why Pound could simultaneously praise Malatesta, Jefferson, Bronson Cutting, Lenin, Huey Long (whose economic views were wildly at odd with Pound's), Mussolini and Coughlin. As Leon Surette has stated, Pound was not an ideologue and with the exception of economics and a handful of idiosyncratic interests, he didn't really care about the specifics of government. Power and "insight" were enough. Even results (sometimes) don't matter that much: Pound admits Malatesta's tempio is a jumble and a junkshop, but praises it because it "registers a concept." Likewise, he admits that Mussolini is full of contradictions, then insists those are irrelevant if one treats him as an "artifex." (Talk about transference.) Contrary to what a number of people have claimed, this is not somehow extraneous to the Cantos; it is absolutely central to it. Additionally, I say that neither because I'm an academic looking to further my career by trampling on Pound, nor because I'm indifferent to the poetry. I think Pound is perhaps the most extraordinary poet of the 20th century. That doesn't mean I'm going to sanitize his politics. Bill Freind