Codevilla On The Revolt Of The Ruling Class

Angelo Codevilla has a good article today about the revolt of the American ruling class. It's a revolt against America's constitutional order. However, before we get into it, I want to raise a point of terminology.

Codevilla repeatedly uses the word "autarchy," especially in the phrase "moral autarchy." Thus:

society’s most influential people have retreated into moral autarchy 

the ruling class’s moral autarchy 

as clear an example as any of that moral autarchy and its grip on institutions

I think the word he really wants is a homophone of autarchy: autarky. In either case, Codevilla would be using the word in a figurative sense, but here's the difference:

autarchy

1. :: noun

Absolute rule or power; autocracy.

1. :: noun

A country under such rule.

1. :: noun

Variant of autarky.

autarky

1. :: noun

A policy of national self-sufficiency and nonreliance on imports or economic aid.

1. :: noun

A self-sufficient region or country.

I submit that what we'll see is that, when he uses the phrase above, Codevilla is describing "moral autarky." A condition not of absolute power, but of a moral self-sufficiency and nonreliance on moral norms "imported" from the society that they rule. They regard their own norms as self-sufficient.

In any event.

Codevilla's article is at American Greatness: Facing Up To the Revolution. Codevilla is concerned that conservatives may mistakenly think that just because Trump appears to be winning, that means that the ruling class has been defeated. We need to realize that the ruling class--what is referred to as the Establishment, and its Deep State instrumentalities for wielding power--are now in a state of revolt against America itself.

And so he writes:

Some conservatives, rejoicing that impeachment turned into yet another of #TheResistance’s political train wrecks and that President Trump is likely to be reelected by a bigger margin than in 2016, expect that a chastened ruling class will return to respecting the rest of us. They are mistaken. 

Trump’s reelection, by itself, cannot protect us. The ruling class’s intolerance of the 2016 election’s results was intolerance of us. 

Codevilla finds that the resistance to the ruling class assault on America has been "halfhearted":

... The halfhearted defenses with which the offensives of the ruling class have been met already advertise the fact that it need not and will not accept the outcome of any presidential election it does not win. Trump notwithstanding, this class will rule henceforth as it has in the past three years. So long as its hold on American institutions continues to grow, and they retain millions of clients, elections won’t really matter. 

Of all those institutions that are now controlled by the ruling class, in my view the most influential is the iron grip that the ruling class has on education--the ability to indoctrinate the young. Where is the resistance to this?

Our country is in a state of revolution, irreversibly, because society’s most influential people have retreated into moral autarchy [sic], have seceded from America’s constitutional order, and because they browbeat their socio-political adversaries instead of trying to persuade them. Theirs is not a choice that can be reversed. It is a change in the character of millions of people. 

The sooner conservatives realize that the Republic established between 1776 and 1789—the America we knew and loved—cannot return, the more fruitfully we will be able to manage the revolution’s clear and present challenges to ourselves. How are we to deal with a ruling class that insists on ruling—elections and generally applicable rules notwithstanding—because it regards us as lesser beings? Some conservatives, ..., expect that a chastened ruling class will return to respecting the rest of us. They are mistaken. 

Trump’s reelection, by itself, cannot protect us. The ruling class’s intolerance of the 2016 election’s results was intolerance of us.

Yesterday at CTH I found a tweet that contained a video from MSNBC in the context of the Iowa Hoax. It's rightly described in the tweet as a "truthbomb." The commentator on MSNBC states openly that both parties have been "privatized." That is, they've been taken over by big money interests. It's true, and it explains the hatred for Trump--a true outsider who doesn't owe his office to the ruling class. They lost to Trump in 2016 and may lose again in 2020, but never believe they'll give up. As sundance likes to tell us: Trillions are at stake.

Wow. Must listen truthbomb just unleashed on MSNBC! pic.twitter.com/UHucI9oPR3

— Chicky Hearn (@ChickHearnBern) February 3, 2020

Codevilla continues by providing us with Exhibit A of the ruling class and its attitude toward us and toward the constitutional order of America. Fittingly, that exhibit was on public display during the height of Impeachment Theater--the very embodiment of the ruling class revolt against America:

Chief Justice John Roberts, presiding over the Senate’s impeachment trial, was as clear an example as any of that moral autarchy [sic] and its grip on institutions. 

Pursuant to Senate rules, Senator Rand Paul sent a written question through Roberts to House Manager Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) regarding the extent of collaboration between Schiff’s staffer Sean Misko and his longtime fellow partisan, CIA officer Eric Ciaramella in starting the charges that led to impeachment. Roberts, having read the question to himself, declared: “The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted.” 

The chief justice of the United States, freedom of speech’s guardian-in-chief, gave no reason for declining to read Paul’s question. The question was relevant to the proceedings. It violated no laws, no regulations. The names of the two persons were known to every member of the House and Senate, as well as to everyone around the globe who had followed news reports over the previous months. But the Democratic Party had been campaigning to drive from public discussion that this impeachment stemmed from the partisan collaboration between a CIA officer and a Democratic staffer. 

Accordingly, the mainstream media had informally but totally banned discussion of this fact, supremely relevant but supremely embarrassing to Schiff in particular and to Democrats in general. Now, Paul was asking Schiff officially to comment on the relationship. Schiff could have explained it, or refused to explain it. But Roberts saved him the embarrassment and trouble—and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) spared senators the problem of voting on a challenge to Roberts’ ruling. The curtain of official concealment, what the Mafia calls the omertà, remained intact. Why no reason? 

Just as no dog wags his tail without a reason, neither did Roberts wag his without reason. Neither the laws of the United States nor the rules of the Senate told the presiding officer to suppress the senator’s question. Why was Roberts pleased to please those he pleased and to displease those he displeased? In short, why did this impartial presiding officer act as a man partial to one side against the other? 

This professional judge could hardly have been impressed by the ruling class’s chosen instrument, Adam Schiff, or by Schiff’s superior regard for legal procedure. ..., it would have been strange if Chief Justice Roberts’ bias was a professional one. 

Is it possible that Roberts favored the substance of the ruling class claim that neither President Trump nor any of his defenders have any right to focus public attention on the Biden family’s use of public office to obtain money in exchange for influence? That, after all, is what Washington is largely about. Could Roberts also love corruption so much as to help conceal it? No. 

Roberts’ professional and ethical instincts incline him the other way.  Nevertheless, he sustained the ruling class’s arbitrariness.

I believe Codevilla is right about this. Roberts was not endorsing the ethical standards of the Bidens of this world. Nor was he signalling that his allegiance was with the Dem party. He was bowing to the will of the ruling class, as he understood it. That the ruling class is bipartisan was unmistakably signalled by the fact that the Senate Republicans did absolutely nothing to defend the Senate's prerogatives as a fundamental constitutional institution, in the face of an utterly arbitrary infringement on those prerogatives by Roberts.

Don't get tired of winning, because we still have a very long way to go. The struggle is not just for the office of the presidency or partisan control of the Legislative Branch. It's for the heart and soul of our country. In the deepest sense it's a Culture War.