Angelo M. Codevilla - The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It

THE RULING CLASS

HOW THEY CORRUPTED AMERICA AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT

ANGELO M. CODEVILLA

An American Spectator Book

Copyright 2010 by Angelo M. Codevilla

FIRST EDITION

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Codevilla, Angelo M.

The ruling class : how political elites hijacked America / Angelo M. Codevilla.

p. cm.

An American Spectator Book.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8253-0558-0 (alk. paper)

1. Power (Social sciences)United States. 2. Elite (Social sciences)Political activityUnited States. 3. United StatesPolitics and government. I. Title.

JK275.C64 2010
305.5240973--dc22

2010033483

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CHAPTER 1
Division, Longstanding and Deep

CHAPTER 2
The Ruling Class

CHAPTER 3
Power and Privilege

CHAPTER 4
The Country Class

CHAPTER 5
Agendas Revolutionary?

CHAPTER 6
How?

All men are created equal

The Declaration of Independence, 1776

Who the hell do they think they are?

Heard on the street, 2010

I WAS SHOPPING for antiques once in Paris, just for the hell of it, and I picked up on a sales technique the locals use. I was looking at a supposed relic from the regime of Louis the Fow-teenth, and a dealer informed me, This is an important piece.

I asked him, Whats important about it?

The dealer was clearly not used to being challenged. Well, its just an important piece, he finally said.

I recognized it as a scam. Its important, I wondered. Important to whom? He was trying to inflate the price and stroke my ego, and it didnt work.

Because of that incident, I very seldom use the word important. But nobody had to tell me that Angelo Codevillas essay, Americas Ruling Class and the Perils of Revolution, is important.

A shorter version of this booklet that you hold in your possibly nicotine-stained hands first ran in the JulyAugust issue of The American Spectator. As I reminded my producer Bo Snerdley, it took up eighteen pages. I couldnt spend my entire show reading from it. But the essay is so good, so timely, so thorough and complete, that I had to try anyway.

One reason it appealed to me is that it dovetails with something I have been struggling to explain for twenty years. Its come to a head now with the election of Barack Obama.

For twenty years I have been asked, Rush, why dont the Republicans do X? One answer Ive settled on is that people never really get out of high school. Wanting to be part of the big clique dominates their lives. Its a quest for power, for acceptance, for belonging to the in crowd, however its defined.

Republicans are the way they are in Washington because Washington is a culture and a place that is run and dominatednot just politically, but sociallyby Democrats, by the left. Theyre the big clique. The Republicans also live there. Everybody wants to get along with those you live next to, and in Washington, the center of power in the world, everybody wants to be in the Ruling Class.

The Ruling Class is the subject of this wonderfully written and crafted essay by Codevilla, who is a professor emeritus at Boston University. We belong to what Professor Codevilla calls the Country Class, meaning not the hick class, but the country.

We are the country. The Ruling Class is a minority. Fewer than 15 percent of Americans agree with the thought process, philosophies, goals, and objectives of the Ruling Class.

We in the Country Class, we believe in merit. We rise or fall based on merit. We believe that a good GPA is whats necessary to get you into college. We believe that performing well on the job is how you get promoted and how you get paid well. That is not true for the Ruling Class. In fact, for them, merit is looked down upon.

As Professor Codevilla points out, these people are a minority, and they have no relationship to the rest of us in the Country Class. Yet somehow we are now being rulednot governedby these people.

They have certain strange beliefs. One of these is that the United States is the problem in the world. Another is that those of us not in the Ruling Class havent got the smarts to know whats best for ourselves. They think they have to decide for us. These are people like Obama and Steve Rattner. They bought up Chrysler and GM and ordered all these dealerships closed under the guise of saving money or saving the auto industry, when in fact what they did was put a whole bunch of people out of work, and in the process shut down a lot of economic activity in the communities where these dealerships were.

These people are threatened by the private sector. They couldnt compete with the average successful person in the private sector. Yet they have the gall to portray themselves as better than us, better than everybody else, more qualified to understand whats best for us.

Thats why we need them in charge of our healthcare. Thats why we need them in charge of our salt intake, of our trans fat intake, of the obesity of our children. Thats why theyre talking about dinners now being served in schools, because parents simply arent responsible enough to feed their kids right, otherwise theyll become fat slobs and put a strain on the American healthcare system.

This is an insidious bunch of people.

But the Ruling Class has a fear. They know that they are a minority, and they know that their time is coming. They know that their Ruling Class status cant be sustained. It hasnt been, throughout history. There have always been revolutions.

In this essay, Professor Codevilla touches on what happens next. He points out that the Ruling Class of today is far more discriminatory and punishing than King George was of the Colonists in the days of their Revolution. The Tea Party is the modern equivalent of our founding revolutionaries. But how do they pull it off this time?

Professor Codevilla points out that the Tea Party needs a political party. The Tea Party needs a political mechanism in order to revolt and replace the Ruling Class. And if its the Republican Partywell, I wont try to paraphrase what Professor Codevilla says. But you can imagine, and I encourage you to read his essay now. Because, folks, its a brilliant piece, and its important. Its not often that I say that.

Rush Limbaugh

THIS IS NOT another book about the political-social issues of our time. It offers no recommendations for legislators, executives, or judges on any hot button matter. Rather, it is a book about the massive fact that underlies all these issues and makes each a battlefield on which vie partisans of radically different Americas. It is about the fact that America now divides ever more sharply into two classes, the smaller of which holds the commanding heights of government, from which it disposes in ever greater detail of Americas economic energies, from which it ordains new ways of living as if it had the right to do so, and from which it asserts that that right is based on the majority class stupidity, racism, and violent tendencies.