On learning of the death of Angelo Codevilla last week I went and reread his prophetic America’s Ruling Class from 2010. I’d say it holds up pretty well.

My only problem is the division of America into two classes, the one-third as Ruling Class and its supporters, and the other two-thirds as Country Class Americans. It’s only when you dive down into the article that he mentions the “ruling class and its underclass clients.”

See, I think the simplest understanding of human society requires three layers or classes: Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs; Educated, Deplorables, and Victims; my own Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates; or Curtis Yarvin’s Gentry, Commoners, and Clients.

You can’t understand “systemic racism,” for instance, without a three-layer theory that experiences today’s educated ruling class as Allies by virtue of their virtue-signaling insistence that their Oppressed People supporters are all helpless victims of eeevil White Oppressors.

Speaking of White Oppressors, NHJ, did you know that America was founded when the Brits dumped a shipload of White Trash in Virginia in 1584 -- way, way before 1619? “Waste Population,” they called them.

My rereading of America’s Ruling Class helped me better understand the big question of why corporate America is all-in on Black Lives Matter. It came to me where Codevilla explains the point of those multi-thousand-page reconciliation bills. If you are a corporation or a professional association you’d better be on board with the rulers’ agenda, or you won’t get your carve-out in the 3,000-page Build Back Better bill: “nice little business you got here…”

Codevilla’s piece also explained to me why all the various professional associations are forcing their members to spout this week’s party line on COVID or lose their accreditation. Did you know that the AMA has an exclusive government contract to determine all those medical billing codes? “Nice little association you got here…”

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, said Don Corleone.

But then, why don’t our liberal friends keep the stupid bitter clingers and deplorables closer than their helpless-victim serfs? You tell me.

I notice, after reading America's Ruling Class all over again, that my maxims about government apply in spades.

• Government is an armed minority, occupying territory, and taxing the inhabitants thereof to reward its supporters.
• Government is force plus loot and plunder.
• All government is unjust because government leaders reward their supporters before the rest of the people.

But it occurs to me that I need a new maxim, relating to rulers demanding people be loyal to them -- rather than dare to parade around as “armed insurgents,” dontcha know.

If you’ve watched The Last Kingdom series about our pal Uhtred of Bebbanburg, you’ll know that King Alfred is always wanting Uhtred to take an oath of allegiance to his kingly magnificence. But Uhtred would really rather be his own man. In Death of Kings, the dying King Alfred is trying to get Uhtred to take the oath of allegiance to the king’s son Edward. I wonder what the equivalent of taking an oath of allegiance would be today?

In our day, we get Big Tech and Social Media and professional sports all taking the knee to the rulers’ moral agenda, and canceling unruly plebeians for the lèse majesté of publishing “disinformation.”

Wait! That’s it! That’s my new maxim! In our age,

• Today’s rulers want you to take the knee -- to them, not BLM, silly!

And then, Codevilla tells us, there was President Woodrow Wilson, former president of Princeton, who was not the last president to invade “a foreign country (Mexico) ‘to teach [them] to elect good men.’”

I had no idea! Codevilla is talking about the 1914 invasion of Veracruz to teach Mexican General Victoriano Huerta a lesson. Then, in 1916, Wilson sent General Pershing to “find and capture” Pancho Villa, who had been doing a spot of looting and plundering on the New Mexico border. Pershing never found Pancho, so Wilson decided to send him and his doughboys to France, setting up the Doris Day musical On Moonlight Bay where a bunch of college boys go straight from graduation into uniform so that they could teach the Germans a lesson.

Aren’t liberal university presidents brilliant!

You realize, don’t you, that it was Wilson’s brilliant Treaty of Versailles that got a certain Austrian lance corporal really mad with the world. Still, that enabled FDR to pull his disaster of a presidency out of a spiral dive and appoint himself World War II Savior, so it wasn’t all bad.

I just hope that President Biden doesn’t try to pull his presidency out of its tailspin by… Oh never mind.

Never forget that Angelo Codevilla wrote 11 years ago:

[S]ome two-thirds of Americans -- a few Democratic voters, most Republican voters, and all independents -- lack a vehicle in electoral politics.

Sooner or later, well or badly, that majority’s demand for representation will be filled.

RIP, Angelo Codevilla.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Gage Skidmore

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