Here’s my new post at Ricochet: Mr. Angelo Codevilla, who recently attracted attention on the Ricochet podcast, seems to me to be the mind behind the many complaints conservatives have about the establishment. Many here on Ricochet have complaints about American politics that range from constitutionalism to foreign policy, & there are many clever speakers in America who teach that the dominant characteristic of American politics is a conflict between the people & the government. This way of talking about the fundamental political conflict between the many & the few has been put forward most clearly & energetically by Mr. Codevilla.
I ran into his strange, strong prose in the pages of the Claremont Review of Books, alongside many far less harsh Straussians. He is also a Hoover Institution fellow. His specialty is foreign affairs. He has written books on arms control, on war, a translation of Machiavelli’s prince, a popular essay on the American ruling class, & recently on how to make & keep peace. The dominant characteristic of Mr. Codevilla’s writings is a refusal to let sleeping dogs lie. He teaches the Straussian story about the origin of the Progressives & the resulting transformation of the relation of citizen & government, but has a uniquely dark, angry view of American foreign policy. He does not wish for things to continue as they are, nor does he believe Americans have to accept their political institutions, but could instead revert to previous institutions. He does not believe American politicians have gotten the fundamental decisions right since Woodrow Wilson was president. He does not believe American foreign policy to be an unfolding catastrophe, but he is dissatisfied with every president since TR.
Whether you agree with these opinions or not, but especially if you do not, you might benefit from confronting the strongest expression of the argument that there is an establishment running American politics & that it is essentially flawed. Mr. Codevilla uses a modified form of the Bolingbroke argument about the essential conflict between the court party & country party, revived & rejected by your Founders for Washington’s Farewell Address. The first Americans to practice this argument were Jefferson & Madison, who created a party meant to unite America & thus remove the need for party–to instead bring about an era of good feelings… Partisanship would be patriotic in that case. Now this argument is put forward again, in order to effect something like regime change–a restoration of constitutionalism as it was. This is supposed to undo the damage done by the Progressives, who also employed this argument–that party government is illegitimate except if, by creating progress, it removes the need for party government. Its targets are the administrative state & the courts who legitimize it.
The reason Mr. Codevilla has attained popularity–through Mr. Limbaugh among others–is that Reagan revived this argument. He is loved by conservatives of a political bent for saying that virtue will brook no disagreement: Politics is not about left or right (equally valid, but opposed parties that dispute & exercise government by turns) but up or down (good or bad government, producing good things for the people or failing in that attempt). (See his rather angry A time for coosing speech of October 27, 1964, as well as his First Inaugural Address, where Progressive government is declared the problem, not the solution–& therefore the partisans of Progressive government are denied any legitimacy as opposition to his new administration.)
Mr. Codevilla argues the American people, by authorizing conservatives to exercise authorized powers, wish to take responsibility for their country & to take their freedom seriously as political rather than otherwise. This is the most obvious & least talked about implication of the conservative anger with the establishment. To be crass–dismantle the TSA & authorize through minimally humiliating or prevaricating procedures the presence of untold numbers of armed men on planes. Mr. Codevilla looks at the facts of 9/11 & turns them into principles: The men who obeyed the Progressive government allowed themselves to be murdered & served as a means to murder thousands of others of their fellow citizens, because they complied in their souls as in their bodies with the federal government. But the men who broke the laws on United 93 died free citizens & saved lives & the honor of America. So also with subsequent terrorists who got past the TSA: The citizens who obeyed the government made of themselves willing sacrifices; but others broke the laws & fought terrorists trying to detonate bombs. I do not believe Americans often hear this kind of reasoning.
Mr. Codevilla argues on this basis that Americans do have a basic awareness of the dangers the world presents to America & an interest in a republican foreign policy, based on simple principles. Conduct commerce–which implies securing the sealanes…–& stay out of other regimes’ domestic concerns–which implies condoning the terrifying slaughters with which the 20th century acquainted us–unless other regimes pose a threat to America. If they do–for example, by condoning terrorism–hold the regimes responsible for terrorist activities, including by destroying the very few people who actually rule, instead of killing untold numbers of people subject to those regimes. I believe he believes, Kill the tyrants, not the people they tyrannize! would be a persuasive directive with Americans. Of course, he is against what the NSA is supposed to be doing; he is dissatisfied with the CIA, the moveable fig leaf of American foreign policy; & he has no respect for a DoD that does war management in the Middle East for longer periods than any previous war in American history.
Mr. Codevilla favors a missile defense program that would be adequate to the task of protecting America, even if it requires creating a new service in the Pentagon to deal with space-based weaponry. He praises the Soviet doctrine of nuclear war, aimed at destroying American military capacities, & damns as both monstrous & inept the American MAD doctrine, aimed at exterminating many millions of people, innocents, needless to say, but crippled by the unwillingness of its creators to enact it. His treatise on war shows what he thinks of American plans to wage war: They are usually blind to political considerations in America & outside America, because they have little respect for the peoples involved. He explains, War is the ultimate form of elections, because it implies decisions which may turn out to be irreversible about who should rule & what they should do. He often brings up the cold, ugly statements of Machiavelli on politics–never do an enemy a little harm–that explains what TR meant by, Speak softly & carry a big stick. He says, foreign policy since has reversed practice because it is based an a mistaken view of politics, in which doing a little harm is not seen as simultaneously presumptuous & naive. Indeed, in this view, American foreign policy is characterized by pious cruelty.
For Americans who wish to learn the political analysis in terms of regime that Aristotle introduced & which Mr. Codevilla has long labored to popularize, I recommend his book,The character of nations. I also recommend Americans two books by Mr. Codevilla, his analysis of the regime of de Gaulle, Modern France, & his analysis of the Swiss regime in WW2, Between the Alps & a hard place. This should show you how different regimes are different while remaining within the republican category, & how they deal with existential crises, domestic & foreign.
*KP added the link to the Ruling class essay.
**BDB pointed out what a mess my phrase is, ‘the mind behind conservative anger’: This was my clarification:
I mean, lots of conservatives are angry at this or that, lots of them have personal experience or professional expertise or both regarding some problem, great or small. But almost no one has mind to match the anger–the all-encompassing intention that precedes action. That requires a study of politics & political science that is rare; it might also require access to some of the procedures & agreements by which policy is made–to be more practical–& maybe the kind of experience of what life was like, say before the Great Society. Most people obviously cannot have that–they have lives to live. If people read his works & recognize their worries & fears, their experiences put together in a coherent way, then I think they’ll agree with me.
This, of course, is not to say Mr. Codevilla alone has such learning & opinions. But among conservative anti-establishment men? Maybe he is alone.
A name I’ve heard but not read. Guess I need to get a book of two of his. Just add them to the pile. Wonder if I’ll read all my books before I die.
How are you doing with kids or nephews? They might use’em. My brother & I have bought books for generations of the family, not to say friends. We’re just bookish types, I guess, but add American capitalists selling cheap books…
It is with books as with new acquaintances. At first we are highly delighted, if we find a general agreement–if we are pleasantly moved on any of the chief sides of our existence. With a closer acquaintance differences come to light; and then reasonable conduct mainly consists in not shrinking back at once, as may happen in youth, but in keeping firm hold of the things in which we agree, and being quite clear about the things in which we differ, without on that account desiring any union.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
I know I won’t, Dev – even the e-books…Maybe there’s a reading room among the many mansions? (When we’re not guarding Heaven’s gates, that is.)
That’s good advice about reading. We’re inclined to think a book’s merit & our approval are the same…
Taste in books is variable from person to person, so I guess your comment of equating a book’s value with one’s own liking is valid.
I have found over the years my own sense of book interest has changed significantly. Once I mostly read fiction. Now only as a time-filler, like on a plane. History beyond what I had learned in schbool was less interesting previously; now it is a great part of what I read. I had never read any of the Bible; now I read it often.
My son reads, but his interests are, in my mind, quite different from mine. He finds just the strangest books. I have no idea where he gets these but on reflection I remember that I didn’t seem to find things with any system before. I would go to a bookstore and wander the isles until something caught my eye. Sometimes I would find something sort of interesting, but wouldn’t take it, then go onward and find another one or two. THEN I would find something I wanted – and go back and pick up all the others.
Perhaps 10 years ago or so I boxed up all my old books that I didn’t really want and took them to the library as a donation. I have kept only a small number that I thought I should – couple fiction writers (Patrick O’Brien, Bill Granger) and books on history, etc.
I share books now with friends (mostly Marines). I leave a few for my son to read, but I suspect he doesn’t. He seems mostly uninterested in politics and books on such seem to leave him cold. My daughter is not inherently a reader, but I give her credit for joining a book club and reading something regularly. My wife likewise is act-oriented and will dutifully finish a book every 6 months or so.
Such is the haphazard world of reading I guess.
Dev, the reading in TET progresses (5000-Year Leap next). Don’t think I’ll ever be ready for Grossman, though…Love O’Brian – gifts for a nephew, but I read them first.
Haven’t read the 5000 book. There are a couple what I think are decent American history books out there.
Got all the O’Brien books. I found him a long time ago and bought them all in a kind of large format paperback. Plus 2 early books he wrote that weren’t so good, but showed promise.
Holy smoke!
I am just starting the “country class” part of the essay you linked to, but already I am completely in accordance with what he is saying.
I may have found a new spokesman. I can’t wait to quote this stuff to my Marine debate group.
You have a Marine debate group?! Cool.
Way cool!
My TBS class holds a reunion every 2 years. We started our first in 2010. It was a huge success, none of us having really seen each other for neigh on 40 years (I even had a couple guys come up and tell me they were surprised to see me alive as they had thought I had been killed in RVN. Such are rumours.)
I helped out a little with the first, and after the second in 2012 I volunteered to be the treasurer. The Reunion Committee has a variety of guys (and one gal who is sort of the administrative assistant. We have made her an honourary LT.) and when I joined the DC lawyer was giving one of the guys some guff. Never one to back away from an argument, I ended up in a series of debates, mostly with him. But lately others have been stepping in. We have added a couple guys who are “interested” and have interesting exchanges on things like economics, islam, foreign policy. Dwight & I had a whole series of discussions on Big Government vs Small Government. Despite being a lawyer, I think Dwight got taken. His answer once to my question of “name ONE thing that is good about Big Government.” was “the National Highway System”. If that’s the best you can come up with, you are sadly short of decent arguments.
Ooh-Rah, Dev! “The 5000-Year Leap” is prep for the Constitution thing…Listening to some jazz; reading one of Clive Cussler’s “Isaac Bell” series, before it becomes my brother’s birthday present…Friday night fun.
Hello, all,
sorry I was not here earlier. I’m glad you liked the essay–from the first time I read this guy, I thought, he’s what conservatives need to clarify their thinking. I do not always agree with him & I prefer far more moderation in politics, but I do prefer clarity in thinking.
Thanks for the story, too–I wouldn’t mind reading more about these reunions!
As for Mr. Codevilla: I gave no bio! He came from Italy young, he joined the Navy, he went into intelligence, he served on the Senate Intelligence Committee as staff & was part of the transition team on intelligence for the Reagan administration.
He’s at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, where all old conservative scholars in history seem to go (Mr. Victor Davis Hanson is there; so was Robert Conquest, the late British historian). He used to teach foreign policy at Boston University.
He became famous because of Mr. Limbaugh–because of the Ruling class essay & his attempt to talk sense to the Tea Party, as a friend. That did not work out: Americans do not really care to listen to people who are learned… Now, he’s attracted attention again. I suppose it will not much matter for long, but some influential people might pay attention.
I have a penchant for avoiding moderation. We had a small Marine group gather in Ft. Lauderdale, and I managed to pretty much light up everyone over something. I guess I fall in the bomb-throwing group. Indeed, Alec, the previous treasurer and a very quiet, staid Southern gentleman type, said to me, “Never saw anyone who could light up a room as fast as you.”
Our current group goes over all manner of things, from islam to Crimea, to Obama foreign policy, to ISIS, to the Mideast in general, to economics. We have one guy who is big into the market and knows a heck of a lot about things like oil cost effects, economy needs, etc. He has been advocating we simply get out of the Mideast as there is no reason for us to be there anymore. Israel is capable of defending itself, and Iran will implode in the not too distant future as the price of oil is dropping and their economy will not tolerate it. Interesting take.
I sent out the link to Codevillia’s essay, Ruling Class. I thought when I read it that it was well thought out and pretty accurate in its assessment. ?You have a recommendation for THE book of his to read. I have also been gong through Murray’s book (M – you do have to read it). Another great find.
Mr. Codevilla’s got lots of books on various aspects of foreign policy. But I think it’s best to go with his most comprehensive statements. I’m now reading his new book, To make & keep peace among ourselves & with all nations. (The closing lines of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.) It’s good. Or you can go with a somewhat older book: Advice to war presidents. That’s his teaching by criticism of 20th-century American foreign policy. He’s harsh. He always pushes his examples further than people can go…
I do not believe Iran will self-destruct any time soon. America could destroy the regime & hurt millions of people by a complete isolation–secondary embargo–threaten embargo against every country that violates the embargo with Iran. But Americans never do that. The regime is quite stable–more so than anything else in the Middle East…