Here’s my new post at Ricochet:\u00a0Mr. 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.<\/p>\n
I ran into his strange, strong prose in the pages of the Claremont Review of Books<\/a>, alongside many far less harsh Straussians. He is also a Hoover Institution fellow<\/a>. His specialty is foreign affairs. He has written books on arms contro<\/a>l, on war<\/a>, a translation<\/a> of Machiavelli\u2019s prince, a popular essay<\/a> on the American ruling class, & recently on how to make & keep peace<\/a>. The dominant characteristic of Mr. Codevilla\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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\u2013to instead bring about an era of good feelings\u2026 Partisanship would be patriotic in that case. Now this argument is put forward again, in order to effect something like regime change\u2013a restoration of constitutionalism as it was. This is supposed to undo the damage done by the Progressives, who also employed this argument\u2013that 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.<\/p>\n The reason Mr. Codevilla has attained popularity\u2013through Mr. Limbaugh among others\u2013is 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\u2013& therefore the partisans of Progressive government are denied any legitimacy as opposition to his new administration.)<\/p>\n 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\u2013dismantle 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2013which implies securing the sealanes\u2026\u2013& stay out of other regimes\u2019 domestic concerns\u2013which implies condoning the terrifying slaughters with which the 20th century acquainted us\u2013unless other regimes pose a threat to America. If they do\u2013for example, by condoning terrorism\u2013hold 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.<\/p>\n Mr. Codevilla favors a missile defense program<\/a> 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\u2013never do an enemy a little harm\u2013that 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>. 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<\/a>. This should show you how different regimes are different while remaining within the republican category, & how they deal with existential crises, domestic & foreign.<\/p>\n