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The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility
In this cross-cultural study, Angelo M. Codevilla illustrates that as people shape their governments, they shape themselves. Drawing broadly from the depths 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 arrangements, 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 chasm 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.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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188 people want to read
About the author
Angelo M. Codevilla
25 books33 followersAngelo M. Codevilla is professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University. Educated at Rutgers (1965) Notre Dame (1968), and the Claremont graduate university (1973), Codevilla served in the US Navy, the US Foreign Service, and on the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He taught philosophy at Georgetown, classified intelligence matters at the US Naval Post graduate School. During a decade at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, he wrote books on war, intelligence, and the character of nations. At Boston University, he taught international relations from the perspectives of history and character.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 22, 2021
Interesting analysis of the way society and government interact across various countries and time periods. He examines how personal morale and values affect the highest tiers of government and vice versa. He has some unpopular opinions about the deterioration of marriage and religion which were not entirely enjoyable to read. He has no faith in the current state of affairs but longs for the US of old. The effect is to make his writing seems both like a rant and a call to action. While at times it seems like the wheezing of an old man longing for the days of the patriarchal family in an America dominated by the influence of the church, his biting critique of the government is quite refreshing. It's not the whine of "it's unfair," today's popular rallying cry, but a dissection of the way government in modern-day America is run with a side-by-side comparison to its past and its contemporaries. I find myself nodding my head in agreement and shaking it in disappointment.
Here are some of my fav quotes
"Most modern states, either by law or regulation, can punish or severely inconvenience parents for inflicting any kind of corporal punishment on their children. Whereas once the policeman would take errant youths home for punishment, now parents are supposed to take errant children to the state for analysis, therapy, and correction." (p165)
~I agree with spankings, I also agree with therapy. Let's not be narrow-minded now.
"Then there is the right to be free from sexual abuse. In the name of it, modern states have build inquisitorial apparatuses that assume that fathers routinely sexually assault children, and that justify their own existence by finding "telltale signs" of abuse in children" (165)
~No, you're right I'm sure child abuse is made up. Good Christian fathers would never become alcoholics or abandon their children.
"Nonetheless, at the end of his [Jeffersons'] life, 50 years after having written the Declaration of Independence, he rejoiced that his country was becoming a hive of industry and commerce because it was happening on moral bases of which he approved" (216)
~Conveniently left out the Indians. In fact, in the glowing review of early America, there is not a single mention of Native Americans. So if we're going to preach the prosperity gospel, let's be clear who is prospering.
Here are some of my fav quotes
"Most modern states, either by law or regulation, can punish or severely inconvenience parents for inflicting any kind of corporal punishment on their children. Whereas once the policeman would take errant youths home for punishment, now parents are supposed to take errant children to the state for analysis, therapy, and correction." (p165)
~I agree with spankings, I also agree with therapy. Let's not be narrow-minded now.
"Then there is the right to be free from sexual abuse. In the name of it, modern states have build inquisitorial apparatuses that assume that fathers routinely sexually assault children, and that justify their own existence by finding "telltale signs" of abuse in children" (165)
~No, you're right I'm sure child abuse is made up. Good Christian fathers would never become alcoholics or abandon their children.
"Nonetheless, at the end of his [Jeffersons'] life, 50 years after having written the Declaration of Independence, he rejoiced that his country was becoming a hive of industry and commerce because it was happening on moral bases of which he approved" (216)
~Conveniently left out the Indians. In fact, in the glowing review of early America, there is not a single mention of Native Americans. So if we're going to preach the prosperity gospel, let's be clear who is prospering.
December 15, 2014
A who's who of nations. 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 admiration 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 doomed 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 have to deal with daily.
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.”
The American 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 faith-based 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.” Sounds like the story of official Republicanism lately.
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.”
“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 read. A who’s who of nations around the world.
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 have to deal with daily.
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.”
The American 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 faith-based 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.” Sounds like the story of official Republicanism lately.
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.”
“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 read. A who’s who of nations around the world.
July 25, 2014
A very important work. He defines culture as habits and those things that people do out of common practice. He admits that many will act independently and within a prescribed set of standards and morals but that is not what his essay is about; rather he explores how government, bureaucracy and authorities pass laws, set policies, use economics to effect these habits. For instance, the law regarding marriage did not happen one day but was a long protracted effort to change the marriage habits of a nation. First, the male and female roles had to be redefined and this is accomplished by passing laws requiring equal hiring. This combined with feminism leads to the woman being liberated from the house. Fast food and television changes the cooking habits of a household. The woman does not need to "slave over the hot stove" and so the male no longer expects a home cooked meal. This leads to lesser ties to home on time, as a quick bite to eat. Combine this with no fault divorce, looser rules for welfare, loss of corporate mobility and emphasis on hedonism and you have the break down of marriage. The tax code incentives can encourage cohabitation while the fashionable seek state supported marriages that are easily annulled or divorced as they are not religious vows but merely economic contracts supported and tailored by prenuptial contracts. In the end the only ones seeing the necessity for marriage are Christians and Gays, as no one else has any reason for vested interest.
he speaks of work, the military, foreign policy and other relevant topics. He makes use of the classical historical paradigm shifts and often compares our present day with Greek or Roman habits of culture. His is not a pessimistic end, though I found myself saying,"How can we possibly survive this trend towards Bureaucratic Dictatorship?". he thinks that all comes to a head requiring mass action either in rebellion, in cultural refusal to submit or even revolution. For example, the young men who are generally used in war would simply refuse to join an army that does not fight to win a war. The nation would be forced to change the foreign policy in order to maintain an army for defense. It is a problem we are beginning to face now. Few real soldiers are joining the war and those who do do not want to be involved in actual killing; but Special Forces are full of warriors, but they leave too early out of frustration for being used as a political factor and not do what they were actually trained for, to kill people and break things.
He sees Christianity specifically and religion in general as that factor that halts the trend toward moral chaos and abdication to the bureaucrats. As Christianity wanes so does moral habits. The State seeks to replace it with Science or Devotion to Common Good but both are fragmented in their conclusions and generally encourage a certain moral apathy, destroying the necessary elements for solid and loyal citizenship. Toss in the greater importance of ethnic background and race and the nation is not unified but divided and the Christian, by definition, is isolated, leaving the State to gain its purposes through corruption of bribes, payments, donations, and fees. This creates a new paradigm shift in habits, namely large corporations actually join the government to maintain financial solubility and individuals quietly cheat, especially on the taxes. But this leads to the State growing even larger and becoming more harsh in regulation and enforcement, leading to a amazing shift where the government becomes the greater producer of jobs, benefits, security, health care, education and justice. Thus teachers and lawyers rise in importance, but also in corruption and incompetence, for both are necessary to gain any future at all for the youth. The greatest generator of wealth is no longer hard independent entrepreneurial efforts but the lottery.
A recommended read.
he speaks of work, the military, foreign policy and other relevant topics. He makes use of the classical historical paradigm shifts and often compares our present day with Greek or Roman habits of culture. His is not a pessimistic end, though I found myself saying,"How can we possibly survive this trend towards Bureaucratic Dictatorship?". he thinks that all comes to a head requiring mass action either in rebellion, in cultural refusal to submit or even revolution. For example, the young men who are generally used in war would simply refuse to join an army that does not fight to win a war. The nation would be forced to change the foreign policy in order to maintain an army for defense. It is a problem we are beginning to face now. Few real soldiers are joining the war and those who do do not want to be involved in actual killing; but Special Forces are full of warriors, but they leave too early out of frustration for being used as a political factor and not do what they were actually trained for, to kill people and break things.
He sees Christianity specifically and religion in general as that factor that halts the trend toward moral chaos and abdication to the bureaucrats. As Christianity wanes so does moral habits. The State seeks to replace it with Science or Devotion to Common Good but both are fragmented in their conclusions and generally encourage a certain moral apathy, destroying the necessary elements for solid and loyal citizenship. Toss in the greater importance of ethnic background and race and the nation is not unified but divided and the Christian, by definition, is isolated, leaving the State to gain its purposes through corruption of bribes, payments, donations, and fees. This creates a new paradigm shift in habits, namely large corporations actually join the government to maintain financial solubility and individuals quietly cheat, especially on the taxes. But this leads to the State growing even larger and becoming more harsh in regulation and enforcement, leading to a amazing shift where the government becomes the greater producer of jobs, benefits, security, health care, education and justice. Thus teachers and lawyers rise in importance, but also in corruption and incompetence, for both are necessary to gain any future at all for the youth. The greatest generator of wealth is no longer hard independent entrepreneurial efforts but the lottery.
A recommended read.
August 14, 2010
An analysis of how a nation's government affects the national character and even the morals of its citizens. Codeville ranges over the post-WW2 landscape with special attention to the Soviet Union and other leftist regimes. The last third of the book is his analysis of the US, ca. 1997. Codeville has attained a level of prominence this summer with an essay published in the American Spectator. The section dealing with the US should sound familiar to admirers of Codeville's more recent work.
Want to read
January 7, 2010http://www.fourmilab.ch/fourmilog/arc...
"This book, drawing on examples from antiquity to the present day, and from cultures all around the world, explores how the character, culture, and morals of a people shape the political institutions they create and how, in turn, those institutions cause the character of those living under them to evolve over time."
"This book, drawing on examples from antiquity to the present day, and from cultures all around the world, explores how the character, culture, and morals of a people shape the political institutions they create and how, in turn, those institutions cause the character of those living under them to evolve over time."
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July 30, 2011Unbelievable book. Has made my head spin for four days.
February 11, 2015
A broad-brush set of circumstances, comparing America, Japan, South America, Russia, and how politics can lead to great things or destruction.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews