Whew! I felt like I had just plunged head-first into 50-degree water after reading Angelo Codevilla’s magnificent essay in the American Spectator, America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution. Prof. Codevilla, who served in senior U.S. intelligence roles under President Reagan before moving to Boston University, long has been one of the clearest critics of the U.S. intelligence establishment and American foreign policy. But he surpasses himself in this “J’Accuse!” against what he calls the ruling class of the government-supported liberal elite. Reading it, one hears trumpets. It has to be read closely; Codevilla’s prose has not an ounce of fat.
Here are a few excerpts. ¡Viva la revolución!
When pollsters ask the American people whether they are likely to vote Republican or Democrat in the next presidential election, Republicans win growing pluralities. But whenever pollsters add the preferences “undecided,” “none of the above,” or “tea party,” these win handily, the Democrats come in second, and the Republicans trail far behind. That is because while most of the voters who call themselves Democrats say that Democratic officials represent them well, only a fourth of the voters who identify themselves as Republicans tell pollsters that Republican officeholders represent them well.
[Snip]
By taxing and parceling out more than a third of what Americans produce, through regulations that reach deep into American life, our ruling class is making itself the arbiter of wealth and poverty. While the economic value of anything depends on sellers and buyers agreeing on that value as civil equals in the absence of force, modern government is about nothing if not tampering with civil equality.
[Snip]
…Democratic and Republican administrations and Congresses empower countless boards and commissions arbitrarily to protect some persons and companies, while ruining others. Thus in 2008 the Republican administration first bailed out Bear Stearns, then let Lehman Brothers sink in the ensuing panic, but then rescued Goldman Sachs by infusing cash into its principal debtor, AIG. Then, its Democratic successor used similarly naked discretionary power (and money appropriated for another purpose) to give major stakes in the auto industry to labor unions that support it.
[Snip]
The 2010 medical law is a template for the ruling class’s economic modus operandi: the government taxes citizens to pay for medical care and requires citizens to purchase health insurance. The money thus taken and directed is money that the citizens themselves might have used to pay for medical care. In exchange for the money, the government promises to provide care through its “system.” But then all the boards, commissions, guidelines, procedures, and “best practices” that constitute “the system” become the arbiters of what any citizen ends up getting.
[Snip]
The ruling class is keener to reform the American people’s family and spiritual lives than their economic and civic ones. In no other areas is the ruling class’s self-definition so definite, its contempt for opposition so patent, its Kulturkampf so open. It believes that the Christian family (and the Orthodox Jewish one too) is rooted in and perpetuates the ignorance commonly called religion, divisive social prejudices, and repressive gender roles, that it is the greatest barrier to human progress because it looks to its very particular interest — often defined as mere coherence against outsiders who most often know better. Thus the family prevents its members from playing their proper roles in social reform. Worst of all, it reproduces itself.
Since marriage is the family’s fertile seed, government at all levels, along with “mainstream” academics and media, have waged war on it. They legislate, regulate, and exhort in support not of “the family” — meaning married parents raising children — but rather of “families,” meaning mostly households based on something other than marriage.
[Snip]
The name of the party that will represent America’s country class is far less important than what, precisely, it represents and how it goes about representing it because, for the foreseeable future, American politics will consist of confrontation between what we might call the Country Party and the ruling class. The Democratic Party having transformed itself into a unit with near-European discipline, challenging it would seem to require empowering a rival party at least as disciplined.
For the country class seriously to contend for self-governance, the political party that represents it will have to discredit not just such patent frauds as ethanol mandates, the pretense that taxes can control “climate change,” and the outrage of banning God from public life. More important, such a serious party would have to attack the ruling class’s fundamental claims to its superior intellect and morality in ways that dispirit the target and hearten one’s own. The Democrats having set the rules of modern politics, opponents who want electoral success are obliged to follow them.
July 22nd, 2010 | 3:09 pm
“Country Class”? Meh… Wishful thinking. The ideology of the Republican Party is closely guarded by the Neo-Con Monolith. It’s the debt financed Party of War and fear. Military exceptionalism and militarism run amok.
Any Country Class challenges to the Neo-Con regime will be either co-opted and diluted into meaningless cant or crushed outright.
July 22nd, 2010 | 3:18 pm
Well, Codevilla’s right that the elites view the populace as a collective drooling, mouth-breathing moron incapable of self-government, and the populace view the elites as Swift’s Laputans, arrogant, theory-obsessed would-be technocrats completely out of touch with how things acutually work and most people actually live. The tragedy is that they are both right.
And while restoring virtue, accountability, and responsibility are neat ideas, the genie is out of the bottle. Entropy is a law of physics that applies as much to cultures as to physical systems. All order tends to disorder over time. Nothing can save us. My only hope is that some day after the coming dark age, there might arise another civilization as humane as ours once was. It’s a slim hope, but not a dream as impossible as restoring our terminally sick culture to health.
July 22nd, 2010 | 3:59 pm
SteveM
Dr. Codevilla’s essay is not about Republicans and Democrats. It’s really not even about conservatives and liberals. It’s a candid observation about power in the modern U.S.A. – who has, what those who have it have in common, and what they do to keep it. Set aside your political pre-conceptions and go back and read it again.
July 22nd, 2010 | 7:47 pm
Re: Eric
I see what you are saying. But Dr. Codevilla tightly binds the Ruling Class to the Democrats.
“…the ruling class holds strong defensive positions and is well represented by the Democratic Party.”
But while the Country Class is party-less, he states it’s more natural political refuge is the Republican Party:
“In the short term at least, the country class has no alternative but to channel its political efforts through the Republican Party.”
I’m thinking pragmatically. The American political system is an effective duopoly, legally and administratively. The ambiguous Country Class has no feasible alternative to the Republican Party.
But both the Democrats and the Republicans are malignantly corrupt. Only the the Ruling Class happens to be sanguine about being Democrats. While the Republican Party is sclerotic. (E.g., Paul Ryan’s point of departure initiatives will get nowhere with the Republican leadership class.)
So the Country Class is left, well…out in the Country.
July 23rd, 2010 | 5:45 am
Obviously if Spengler, a brilliant essayist, lauds an essay I’d be mad not to read it. And whoa what a beauty! Ranks as one of the best I’ve read in years.
Right on the money – not an ounce of fat.
Thanks for the tip Mr. Goldman.
July 23rd, 2010 | 10:19 am
More than any article I have read in a few years, this one helps me understand the apparent incongruence of events and responses that our “ruling class” continues to exhibit, from litigation instead of troops at our southern border to health care legislation instead of business incentives for an ailing economy. I realize that there is not much that I as a citizen can do to stop this process from continuing, but it sure helps to understand what is happening so that I might better prepare for the serious clashes that surely lie ahead. My hope is that we will not “accept what was done to us just because it was done.”
July 23rd, 2010 | 10:20 am
I just finished reading the entire article. Brilliant !!
What a breath of fresh air!
Members of the ruling class will certainly try to belittle and discredit it, but, as Bob Dylan once sang, “the times, they are a’ changin’.”
July 23rd, 2010 | 10:36 am
To use the term “ruling class” is offensive and inaccurate – - if you are truly interested in reform then we need to look at the true source of the problem, the American people. If you seek their monument, look around. We have elections in this country, and we get the government “We the People” elect. It’s far too easy to blame some ill-defined elite than it is to blame ourselves.
July 23rd, 2010 | 11:17 am
What I would have said differently (and have been saying in several venues throughout the financial crisis) is that the “country party” brought its woes on itself. The entrepreneurs of the 1980s and 1990s became the real estate speculators of the 2000s. The entrepreneur who in 1985 would have used the equity in her home to start a business became the condo-flipper of 2005. It’s the exurbs, the economic frontier of the aspiring rich, that have been flattened most completely by the crisis, precisely because they were the most overbuilt. There is no “closed economy” solution for America’s economic problems, as Reuven Brenner and I have been arguing in the pages of First Things. And the “country party” is too insular to make sense of this. Codevilla himself is one of the best foreign policy analysts in the country. But the “country party” is desperately deficient in leaders. Where is our Reagan?
July 23rd, 2010 | 12:26 pm
Prof. Codevilla’s fundamental distinction between a ruling and country class is basically true, though as with any fundamental distinction it lacks nuance.
Codevilla is brilliant in his discussion of the antipathy of the secular ruling class to family life and religion. Anyone seriously religious in this country is regarded as some sort of a wing-nut. The ruling class dealt viciously with George Bush and John Ashcroft in large part due to their public avowal of devout Christianity. He is wrong in assigning W Bush to the secular ruling class, though HW Bush belongs perfectly to it.
Codevilla is weak in his political analysis.Politically within the present ruling class, we have a core of senators and congressmen who are worthy of leading the country class including Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, Jim Demint, Tom Coburn, and possibly Scott Brown.
Codevilla is spot on in criticizing parts of Wall Street and the business world that have become dependent through government regulation and largesse, though he underestimates the vitality of private equity and investment banking that for the most part view the government colossus as an arch enemy. He has little understanding that private capital investment has become rather skillful at finding ways to fight and beat the unimaginative and entrenched ruling class. Many first-class business managers and working men and women are appalled at the weakness and fecklessness of the ruling class.
In some sort of strange way Obama, who is almost a caricature of the feckless ruling class, has awakened the country class to the absurdity and weakness of the ruling class. Come November 2010 and 2012 this will likely deliver a political earthquake. Hopefully, unlike in 2004, the Republicans who will eventually rule again had better be ready to deliver the goods to the country class.
July 23rd, 2010 | 1:18 pm
Re: Peter – “Come November 2010 and 2012 this will likely deliver a political earthquake. Hopefully, unlike in 2004, the Republicans who will eventually rule again had better be ready to deliver the goods to the country class.”
Well no Peter, because elections are merely oscillations out of the Democratic pot into the Republican fire and back.
Of course the Republicans won’t deliver the goods and then another oscillation. The Democrats are a Free Lunch/Free War party and the Republicans are a Free War/Free Lunch party. It’s a pathological perpetual motion machine.
We can’t afford the plowshares that government has promised. But we surely can’t afford more swords of American Empire that the neo-cons promise when they re-assume power and debt finance more wars.
July 23rd, 2010 | 6:13 pm
The “free war” syndrome will end, not when we reduce foreign involvement, but end it, especially in the middle east. The “free lunch” syndrome will end, not when we slow the growth of government, but when we actually reduce the federal government. I’m not promoting any candidate leaders for the country folk, but the only presidential candidate of recent memory who has consistently promoted an end to both of these debt-financed agendas on constitutional grounds is Ron Paul. Ronald Reagan was in his 70s when elected.
July 23rd, 2010 | 6:24 pm
P.S.
Marc Thiessen, National Review: “With growing threats such as a nuclear Iran, a rising China, and the continuing danger of terrorist attack, increased defense investments are something every constitutional conservative should support.”
Gary Schmitt, Weekly Standard: ”If anything, we’re spending too little on defense.”
Including Intel and National Security DOE and DHS functions, “Defense” expenditures total more than $1 TRILLION a year. More than every other nation combined.
And the National Review and Weekly Standard are the mouthpieces for the mainstream Republican apparatus.
Under that regime the Republican Party is the War Party. And when Republican candidates vetted by Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney get re-elected, there will be more war and the continued sanctification of military exceptionalism.
July 23rd, 2010 | 11:17 pm
Steve M:
We spend 3.6 percent of our GDP for defense, which amounts to approximately 18 percent of the annual federal budget. This so-called ‘war party’ seems pretty ineffective to me. Defense is a legitimate constitutional function given to the federal government; health care and any number of nanny state programs are simply 20th century inventions. That’s were the waste and the bloat exist.
July 24th, 2010 | 1:46 am
Nothing will change in Washington until the Chinese stop buying our Debt.
July 24th, 2010 | 9:57 am
Re: Publius
So you’re a Republican and not Country Class. I’m sure you’ll be happy it’s again your turn.
BTW, I agree that Defense is indeed a legitimate constitutional function.
But Empire? Transforming alien societies half-way around the world in our image? Impinging on civil liberties in the name of an ambiguous, endless “war”? Constantly banging the drum of military exceptionalism?
Not so much…
July 26th, 2010 | 7:55 am
Steve M:
Civil liberties are being “impinged”? Maybe if you are someone calling Pakistan repeatedly using a disposable cell phone…. Please, let’s be real. This country is by any standard you choose one of the most protective of civil rights and civil liberties in the world. The notion of a secret government running roughshod over our freedoms is a figment of the internet’s imagination.
August 5th, 2010 | 2:59 am
Gary North added a “what do we do now”:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north872.html
In a nutshell, it’s DE-FUND the system, and DE-CENTRALIZE power. De-fund gov’t boondoggles, and get active in local politics, and work to move power back locally.
http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/
States’ rights, county rights, sheriff’s rights!
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