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The Character Of Nations: How Politics Makes And Breaks Prosperity, Family, And Civility
Author(s): Angelo Codevilla (Author)
- Publisher: Basic Books
- Publication Date: November 7, 1997
- Edition: First Edition
- Language: English
- Print length: 352 pages
- ISBN-10: 0465082203
- ISBN-13: 9780465082209
Book Description
In the aftermath of the Cold war, people around the globe are reexamining and reinventing their political systems, conscious that political choices imply different ways of life. In this new cross-cultural study, Angelo M. Codevilla illustrates that as people shape their governments, they shape themselves. Drawing broadly from the sweep of history, from the Roman republic to de Tocqueville’s America, as well as from personal and scholarly observations of the world in the twentieth century, The Character of Nations reveals remarkable truths about the effects of government on a society’s economic arrangenments, moral order, sense of family life, and ability to defend itself.Codevilla argues that in present-day America government has had a profound negative effect on societal norms. It has taught people to seek prosperity through connections with political power; it has fostered the atrophy of civic responsibility; it has waged a Kulturkampf against family and religion; and it has dug a dangerous schasm between those who serve in the military and those who send it in harm’s way. Informative and provocative, The Character of Nations shows how the political decisions we make have higher stakes than simply who wins elections.
Editorial Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews
Proof that even the most promising topic can be drained of meaning by a heavy-handed ideological analysis. Codevilla (International Relations/Boston Univ.; Informing Statecraft, 1992) aspires to join the great tradition of thinkers who have explored the relationship between political regimes and the character of the governed. Unfortunately, he seeks to buttress convictions, rather than acquire knowledge. Having assumed, for example, the superiority of the two-parent, patriarchal family, he sets out to selectively mine human experience for anecdotes supporting his predetermined conclusions. While this effort degenerates into predictable rantings about contemporary American politics and culture, there is a sense in which Codevilla has succeeded in this volume. The problem confronting culture warriors is that their basic themes are so familiar, it is difficult to say anything new. But if each contribution to the attack on the hated liberal establishment is read as an entry in a contest to see who can construct the most outlandish straw man, then Codevilla is both competitive and entertaining. In his view, “modern Western regimes are inherently enemies of families,” perpetrating outrages such as eliminating “laws that give married men advantages in competing for jobs.” According to him, the US government has made abortion “the most absolute right in the land” and is “responsible for the universities’ uniform hostility to religion, to Western culture, and to America in general”–trends furthered by the fact that, with few exceptions outside the hard sciences, universities “have hired only political leftists.” His tendency to condemn absolutely, eliminating all nuance or complexity from social analysis, gives Codevilla an edge in the competition and should amuse readers who can appreciate his willingness to set reality aside in pursuit of seductive generalizations. — Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
In The Character of Nations, Angelo M. Codevilla, who teaches international relations at Boston University, sets out to show that different forms of government differently shape the lives of those who live under them, giving rise to distinctive habits in every realm from the economic, civic, and military to the familial and spiritual. The heart of the book is a critical examination of the United States, where the expanding reach of government, he argues, has undermined popular habits of self-reliance. As Codevilla rightly suggests, thoroughgoing change will come about only if and when our noxious elite culture passes from the scene. But the grip of that culture on the lives of Americans is already not quite so tight as Codevilla would have us believe. Just as the American people themselves cannot be wholly absolved of complicity in some of the developments he deplores, especially on the moral and cultural front, so the “regime” is susceptible of correction by movements he would applaud. When it comes to America, at least, not even the most persuasive theory about “the character of nations” is ever quite adequate to reality. — Commentary, Daniel Casse
Mr. Codevilla’s two arguments–against government activism and for government retrenchment–are eloquently presented in this book, and they are eminently plausible. Indeed, they have been a mainstay of conservatism for some time, and Mr. Codevilla restates them with considerable verve. Surprisingly, there are now signs that conservatives themselves are at odds with each other about whether both arguments really go together.
The Character of Nations helps us to think about recent and, it seems, ever-widening fissures in the conservative movement. — The Wall Street Journal, Andrew Stark
