Codevilla is not a household name. The recommendation is to read anything he ever wrote that you can get your hands on. His life was spent (he is gone now) in American Intelligence but not as a lackey-as a thinker and policy. Opinions may differ but most think he makes a very solid case for what he prescribes. He has no illusions about how the world works and what America had best be doing in order to survive. He is as serious as a heart attack. What he urges really is to carefully consider his well constructed logic. He illustrates his points with constant reference to John Quincy Adams. His view was that Adams was a very great success in foreign policy and Adams can be and should be emulated as we need to be successful much more now than ever. It is a short book but 250 pages so that all the policy errors of the recent past are not fleshed out. He convinces by persuasion and the deployment of knowledge-some of which would be unknown to even a well read person(this is true of all of his books). His shorter book, The Ruling Class, is also a must read for those who would like to be informed by an incisive mind rather than by sound bytes or the pundit de jour. The serious person with concerns about our national situation will find this book confirming his concerns and in manner that he has overlooked.
At root, perhaps, is what passed for thought among progressives. It is not so much that they failed or erred but that their vision blinded them to realties....to our cost. Codevilla adds to your knowledge base. I did not find errors in his work. Those of an age have lived thru most of what Angelo describes and so his view might jar with your own but you will consider his evidence. The young might find it difficult but profitable to them as they are going to have to live in this future more so than the more elderly. In a sense he wrote this for the youth as they would have no other means of obtaining what he thinks is desirable wisdom.
The corpus of his works pays little attention to political correctness. This is a virtue. He won't bend the knee. It is said that if college students or graduates can't tell when they are being lied to then they ought to get a refund. Codevilla gives you the receipts to give to the bill collectors for any number of truths you might have enjoyed but are proven now to have been false.
I've not done this before but perhaps Amazon would allow some cross pollination. "
FLASHBACK TO 2010: Angelo Codevilla on America’s Ruling Class.
As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.
When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.
And from Glenn in February at his Substack: Thoughts on our ruling class monoculture." Codevilla is of that quality that he is in the minds of those who wish to know. A small sample of Codevilla is going to be better for a review than the opinion of someone you don't know.
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Indispensable and a joy to digest
Mr. Codevilla is an excellent writer, historian, statesman in his own right and dare I say prophet!I am so glad I bought this book in hardcover *I am truly enjoying (I'm still reading it) learning about John Quincy Adams and his mastery of language, cultures and politics among other historical curiosities and value pointsOne thing is abundantly clear so far - the costs of foreign wars are not tabulated in currency alone. People have feelings and memories both of which can be revived by later generationsThank you for reading
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Mr. Codevilla is an excellent writer, historian, statesman in his own right and dare I say prophet!
I am so glad I bought this book in hardcover *
I am truly enjoying (I'm still reading it) learning about John Quincy Adams and his mastery of language, cultures and politics among other historical curiosities and value points
One thing is abundantly clear so far - the costs of foreign wars are not tabulated in currency alone. People have feelings and memories both of which can be revived by later generations
Thank you for reading
I am so glad I bought this book in hardcover *
I am truly enjoying (I'm still reading it) learning about John Quincy Adams and his mastery of language, cultures and politics among other historical curiosities and value points
One thing is abundantly clear so far - the costs of foreign wars are not tabulated in currency alone. People have feelings and memories both of which can be revived by later generations
Thank you for reading
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Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2022
