The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility

Angelo Codevilla's The Character of Nations is at once a well-written, closely argued and thoroughly documented look at how today's United States of America has made almost a 180-degree turn from the USA of de Tocqueville's time. Codevilla is at his best when he shows the contrasts between what government frowned upon a generation ago, and that is now promoted by various government programs and agencies: "The contemporary American elites ... now enjoin actions once prohibited and prohibit actions once enjoined." Things that were considered too shameful even to discuss a generation ago are now held out as worthy of tolerance and often are deemed superior to more traditional aspects of Western culture.

This volume should be read alongside Thomas Sowell's excellent book, The Vision of the Anointed. Both books show how the failed palliatives proffered by Big Government have actually tended to exacerbate the problems they were designed to solve. I was especially troubled by the account of the Los Angeles riots, where "the police absented themselves for about twenty-four hours and left store owners to defend lives and property as best they could with their own weapons." Codevilla reports that the police then handcuffed and took away hapless store owners (many of them immigrants and minorities) who they found trying to protect their property. Increasingly, law-abiding citizens are being blamed for the increase of violence we are experiencing, and judges bend over backward to release convicted criminals back into the communities which had been their prey (but not, Codevilla notes, into the communities "where judges and court officials live").

The rise in convictions for "white collar crimes," along with seared consciences over the high rate of incarceration among Black males, has led to such anomalies as persons (and their employers) being tried and convicted of "sexual harassment" for doing little more than telling an off-color joke, while convicted rapis! ts are set free because the prisons are too crowded. Persons who try to ignore race in making decisions are called "racist" by others who want everything to be judged on the basis of a person's race, gender or class. Increasingly, ordinary citizens are intimidated by an atmosphere in which those who are "successful" in life are put down while those who are "oppressed" receive large doses of government support.

Although Codevilla's book is well-reasoned and documented, I doubt sincerely that it will change very many minds. The Republicans in Washington have been unable to stand up to thrashings administered by Senator Ted Kennedy when the Republicans do not support this or that expansion of the federal government's "village." Kennedy and other sycophants of the federal leviathan call their opponents "haters" and "enemies of women and children" when they oppose further extension of government powers.

In the meantime, Samuel Frances has noted that a government that is strong enough to defend every form of human depravity is also strong enough to punish those who work for a living and are motivated by a sincere belief in God and Country. If we were ever to have to fight a war like World War II, I doubt very much that we could survive. Who would be willing to risk life and limb to defend a country where their ways are vilified and "alternative lifestyles" are subsidized and promoted in our schools?

My guess is, not enough to field a sufficient fighting force. Codevilla quotes Mario Cuomo, who decried the gun-toting "hunters who drink beer, don't vote and lie to their wives about where they were all weekend." Remember, these are not criminals he is describing, but rather folks who work hard to make an honest living so they can support their families, while being required to shoulder an ever-increasing portion of the tax burden so that others who do not work can receive an after-tax income in excess of their own.

Codevilla h! as done a great service by showing how, historically, declines in civility and centralization of government power have destroyed once-great civilizations. Americans believe they are invincible. Some would argue that America is a "plum ripe for the picking."

I only hope that I am wrong in my belief that The Character of Nations will not change very many minds. Perhaps those who do read the book will be emboldened to speak up the next time someone impugns Western Democracy.

Published in 1997, Dr. Codevilla's The Character of Nations is a prescient work that outlines the core values of a civil society. In the post 9-11 world it is necessary to stress the importance of understanding the distinct changes in the threat to U.S. security, and debunk the myths created and circulated by the ignorant and uninformed. Historically, we have viewed the threat to our national security as being associated with a government, linear in development, in accordance with well-understood rules of engagement, and an enemy whose tactics, weapons, and assets were relatively easy to detect and recognize.

Now we must consider the degree of threat from subversive domestic insurgencies disguised as special interests groups demanding `protection' via legal mandate. Striking at the very heart of morality and legality, domestic insurgent acts of self-interest such as those, which result in reverse discrimination, inequitable distribution of property, and sundry other self-serving interests are subversive to the very notion of the rule of law. "The hallmark of the politics and economics of tyranny is cronyism...Arguing about what interest group gets what is conducive neither to prosperity nor to civility...Nothing so affects economic life, civic life, or, for that matter, family and spiritual life as whether the rulers are bound by law or rule by discretion" Pp. 8-11. The Constitution provides for equitable and impartial treatment. Nowhere does it forecast a need for special protections of specific groups looking for social advancement and financial gain.

The good news is that there are a growing number of informed individuals, Dr. Codevilla included, that are willing to step forward and profess their understanding of the reality of our leniency towards sensitive issues that affect our national security for the sake of political expediency. The combined effect of "...who gets what, where, and how, and at whose expense, as well as questions about which classes of people are to be somehow `protected,' subsidized, or entitled, also naturally lead to combat" cannot be overlooked for their seriously damaging long-term ramifications for global political and economic stability and ultimately US security.

This is the best book for those ready to step-up-to-the-plate, and campaign for change that really matters in the fight for freedom.

I read this book some years ago and was happy to see its republication as it is a clear exposition of the now politically incorrect thesis of cultural,moral and resultant nationalistic differences between nations and groups as opposed to the numbing and leveling moral and cultural equivalences that has become cant for the left.And ,voila,there it is expressed so well in the witless Kirkus review which I usually ignore.I have a rule of thumb in rejecting any book reviewed only by Kirkus and the Library journal(That's all they could get?? Geez). Try this rule ,it works.As I recall ,I would give the book 5 stars . I would give the Kirkus review 5 stars for pc predictability. Talk about "lack of nuance"!!!

Reading this book I feel like one of Mr Codevilla's students: "We have read the published version of this event. Please tell us the real story." To me this book was a revelation, as much for the data inside as for the author, whom I would describe as another Thomas Sowell, for the clarity and immediacy of his speech. After reading this I am more than ever convinced that the love that elite America has always felt for Europe is one of the main causes of the political and social divides inside American society today: Like an extra-marital affair with a high class prostitute. A fatal attraction.

I would recommend to the reader that he combine the reading of this book with Dick Morris's Catastrophe, for a more detailed analysis of how insiders to the regime play their lucrative parts in Obama's America. Thus you get to understand the big picture as well as the day to day money-dealings inside the US regime.

Here's all you want to know about the world, socially and politically. There is no better book to travel all over the world with and understand how the common folks in those places must feel.

The nature of our western regimes:
"The most economically profitable thing you can do, whether in Europe or in Argentina, or China or Chicago, is to worry less about producing than about building a profitable relationship with the regime. Because exchanging economic privilege for political support is the essence of modern government."

"Regimes have added a new twist ... that government must depend on science, which dictates that people must surrender to their betters plenary powers over where and how they live, how much and what kind of energy or even food they consume, in order to 'save the planet' from human habitation's effects."

Our military:
"The change began in the 1950's, as the social groups that make of the regime began to look down on their fellow citizens' revulsion to communism ... our regime, scornful of the traditional military goal of victory, became accustomed to using the armed forces in ventures from the Balkans to Iraq that were neither war nor peace, that were more obviously related to regime goals than to American interests -but that got a lot of people killed nevertheless.

Russia
"Mafia oligarchies such as post-Communist Russia, where the rulers regard others' property as a threat to their own and where friendship is restricted to families."

Singapore
"defenseless free ports, like Singapore, where the rulers thrive within systems of law and low taxes that encourage large numbers of people to think of nothing but making money."

China
"Business in China consists effectively of granting and using the privilege to hire labor for next to nothing. The system runs ... on the expectation that various officials will be content with the bribes they have received."

Europe
"All Europeans accept their roles as subjects -as entitled consumers of government services. The real citizens of Europe, from whom power and to whom privilege flow, are society's corporations, whether big business, unions, political parties, or the complex of bureaucrats and the interest groups they finance."

"It is difficult to imagine Europeans nowadays offering their lives for their country. Contemporary Europe's way of life has been possible only because it was protected by the United States." And here's where the US could have had the upper hand in its dealings with Europe, but dismissed it.

Analyses of other countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, Mexico, Italy, etc. are all here, and every one of them is a travelogue to be relished, never boring and always enlightening.

How come the demise of Catholic Europe since WWII, and so fast?
"In Catholic Europe, the Christian Democratic movement, the principal reaction to militant liberalism, gave up advocacy of Christian causes, refused to take clear stands on the major issues of the day, immersed itself in day-to-day administration, and died. Throughout the European continent, then, politics has trained people to forget the soul." Sound like the story of Republicanism since... Lincoln?

Germany in a few slides:
"In their most vigorous years, these people lived by Nazi standards. They spent their middle age trying to approach the ideals of the Adenauer republic -bourgeois respectability ... their old age has been passed in a country characterized by sex shops, welfare and environmentalism, where the ways of the Adenauer republic are ridiculed. Their last impressions must be of Muslim neighbors whom it is dangerous to displease."

How the regime works"
Scientific management, its success depending on maintaining a pretense of neutrality on the issues, but there is "massive evidence that those who hawk certain kinds of social or environmental policies in the name of science are partisans of those policies."

"Today's tycoons have more power over ordinary people than the trusts of a century ago, because while the old robber barons had to do the robbing themselves, today's CEOs can count on the government to do it for them by manufacturing markets for them, by tailoring rules that stifle competition, and by bailing out their blunders."

"The regimes rule more by fashion ... than by statute. It defines itself by its icons and taboos." Sounds like paganism and superstition are here again.

The way to get rich:
"The new path to riches is knowing what the government wants ... though lawyers produce nothing, they are paid more than engineers because government makes their services really more valuable ... such high salaries are passed on to the public through higher prices."

Affirmative action:
"is about neither race nor sex. It is about politics ... it is about patrons and clients ... about adding to the power of those who already have power and obliging those under them to build the personal political relationships that override objective criteria and immunize against New Age accusations."

You get a lot of information here, from almost every corner of the world and every facet of society. If a businessman came from outer space, this would be the book he should need. And that seems also as far as we -rather serfs than citizens- are from the ruling bureaucrats in the West.

I just finished this book and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is a scholarly/philosophical work, but mostly philosophical. It clarifies what it means to be a citizen and for me also clarified that, not only do laws govern behavior, they shape the character that motivates behavior. I'm also convinced that very little of our true citizenship remains. We retain the formality but little of the substance, thanks to leftist progressive laws that have usurped the responsibilities and duties of citizenship. Americans are more subjects than citizens. American citizenship is quite nearly dead, which means citizenship anywhere is nearly dead.