Angelo Codevilla, after telling America it must merge itself with Mexico, denounces “haughty elites”

James P. writes:

Writing at the Corner, Angelo Codevilla holds out Sarah Palin as the exemplar and champion of the “ordinary American” who is tired of being treated as contemptible clay by the political elite. Yet the number one thing the elites are actually doing to harm ordinary Americans is importing a horde of Hispanics, an action which Codevilla endorsed as natural, inevitable, and good in his insane article demanding America’s “marriage” with Mexico. The elites treat the openly stated objections of the majority of ordinary Americans to mass immigration with complete contempt. How can Codevilla possibly square his defense of Palin against the elite with his defense of what the elites are doing?

Codevilla says:

The 2012 election’s potential for revolution, then, depends on whether Sarah Palin or anyone else lives up to the contemptuous caricature that the Court party has drawn of the Americans they imagine to be their underlings. Any leader of the Country party would have to challenge the Court party’s assertion of wisdom and morality, attack it for its privileges and corruption, and repeat the most damning of questions: Who the hell do you think you are to presume to rule us like this?

But of course one of the very first things Palin—or any “Country” candidate—would do is attack mass immigration. When Palin stands up and says, “Who the hell do you think you are to presume to swamp us with millions of Hispanics?”, what is Codevilla going to say then?

LA replies:

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. As I said the other day, Codevilla’s statements are demented, more so even than those of his Boston U. colleague Andrew Bacevich who said that America had to bring millions of Iraqis to America to make up for the bad things we had done to Iraq.

Consider. At the Corner Codevilla denounces

the media’s haughty personages, the college towns’ privileged residents, affirmative action’s beneficiaries, the “mainstream” politicians who supported billions for bailouts and “stimuli,” the upscale folks who look down on the rest of us and upon themselves as saviors of the planet…

It doesn’t occur to Codevilla that in his own statements at American Spectator he was being extremely haughty and speaking like the dictator of the planet, or at least of North America:

For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, whether anybody likes it or not, the United States and Mexico are joined at the Rio Grande until the stars fall from the sky. What Geography hath joined together, let no man even think of putting asunder…

So, self-interest as well as the Golden Rule command us to love Mexicans as we love ourselves…

… the national identity of Mexico’s 110 million largely young and vigorous people is up for grabs….. Mexico is a big, diverse country whose attitude toward the U.S. is always up for grabs.

Indeed, “extreme haughtiness” does not begin to describe Codevilla’s arrogant, commanding posture, in which he comes across like Jehovah on uppers, telling Americans that they have NO CHOICE but to do what HE (the voice of nature, God, and historical inevitability) tells them to do, namely to marry and merge our nation with Mexico. Ditto his repeated statement that the entire Mexican nation is “up for grabs,” if only we embrace it. Talk about seeing common humanity as clay to be shaped by the elite!

And what about his denunciation of affirmative action, as one of the things that those “haughty personages” are imposing on us? Is he really not aware that we now have systematized group privileges for all Hispanics, so that every Hispanic added to the U.S.—and Codevilla wants to add the entire country of Mexico to the U.S.—adds automatically to the “diverse,” “underprivileged” population that must be equally represented in every job and every field and every school?

—end of initial entry—

LA writes:

For readers who would like to write to Angelo Codevilla and point out to him the conflict between his command that the U.S. open its borders to and merge itself with Mexico, and his support for the American common man against arrogant, haughty elites, here is his e-mail address, which is listed on his page at Boston University, School of International Relations.

Speaking of international relations, Codevilla’s momentous discovery that nations sharing a common border must marry each other and love each other as they love themselves must surely rank as the most innovative concept in international relations since the death of Napoleon.

FD writes:

I thought the most interesting aspect of the Codevilla thing is: What does it say about the American Spectator? George Gilder (an open borders loon was contributing money to it in the 90’s, but I don’t know much more than that). Perhaps the Spectator has been effectively purchased by open borders types the way Dusty Rhodes bought National Review and the Sierra Club was purchased by another wealthy person.

Dr. Codevilla is probably just a less-well-known-than-he-would-prefer academic fishing for money. It will be worthwhile to find out where the money is coming from, perhaps a fifth-columnist like Grover Norquist. I’m sure the answer will appear soon.

As for Dr. Bacevich, while I honor his own service and pray that he and his family recover from the agony of losing their son in Iraq, he seems to me to have been pushed by adulation into extreme positions and nothing he publishes will be worth reading until he regains his composure. In interviews, his demeanor can be best described as “clenched.”

Thank you for your website. It is the clearest, most useful expression of political thought available today.

LA replies:

Thank you very much.

I saw Bacevich interviewed on CSPAN last October and noticed the clenched quality you speak of along with an impressive, military bearing. All in all, I felt there was something not right about him, which took the form of his crabbed and highly negative view of America in which he attacks the neocon idea of America but has no positive view of America of his own to offer against the neocons’ false idea, thus basically leaving America as worthless. I’ve described the interview here.

I’m not sure what you mean, however, by adulation. Bacevich is a professor who writes articles on politics. Where has he been receiving adulation? Yes, he’s found a venue in the leftist magazines more recently. And I suppose his denial of any worth in America would win him support on the both the left and the paleo right.

FD replies:

Sorry, the word “adulation” was poorly chosen. The old National Review used to describe it as “Strange New Respect” when a conservative would attack other conservatives. I agree with your assessment.

Paul Mulshine writes:

By the way, Palin was cited in those Spanish-language McCain ads as supporting amnesty.

David B. writes:

That Great Conservative Writer, R. Emmett Tyrrell, approved Codevilla’s article urging a merger with Mexico. I assume RET still edits The American Spectator as I haven’t looked in a long time.

LA replies:

For the last 20 years TAS has been edited by that open borders guy Vladie what’s his name (who once told me that he wouldn’t publish anything criticizing immigration because he didn’t want to stir up the racism of his readers). RET just hangs out being a grey eminence,if anyone so utterly talentless and lacking anything to say can be eminent. What a symbol of the vacuity of conservatism.

David B. replies:

Yes, I had known that Tyrrell no longer edited TAS but it had slipped my mind. Not that it matters one way or another who the editor is.

LA replies:

He is still officially the editor:

Publisher: Alfred S. Regnery
Editor in Chief: R. Emmett Tyrrell
Editorial Director: Wladyslaw Pleszczynski

How about that: Alfred Regnery, of the famous conservative publishing family, publishing Codevilla’s insane treasonous article. Once again, there’s “conservatism” for you. Do these self-described “conservatives” at TAC actually believe that the U.S. should marry itself to Mexico and love Mexico as it loves itself? Do they think at all? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

The answer, as I’ve said before, is that no matter how conservative a person may think he is, if he does not believe in the American nation as a concrete thing, but sees it only as a set of principles, then when it comes to Third World immigration he will almost automatically do a Benedict Arnold to the open borders camp in order to distance himself from “racism.”

And this is the ground on which genuine conservatives must take a stand: If you only believe in America as a set of ideas and values, if you don’t believe in America as a concrete historical nation, people, and culture, then you’re not a conservative, and you’re not on our side. You’re on the other side.

People will say my position is extreme and fascistic. But it is no more extreme and fascistic to say that America is a concrete nation, and not just a set of ideas, than it is to say that a human being is a concrete person, and not just a set of ideas.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 06, 2009 04:56 PM | Send