Angelo Codevilla died a year ago. Law & Liberty rightly remembers the man with a symposium on his last, posthumous tract on statecraft & the American regime, America’s Rise & Fall Among Nations: Lessons in Statecraft from John Quincy Adams. One can only hope as many young Americans of some ambition & spiritedness read it—for my part, I remember him thus:
Angelo Codevilla, who died last September, was America’s Cato. His great sternness of speech and unfailing opposition to political corruption, combined with the simplicity of his way of life and the integrity of his conduct, serve as a stinging rebuke to the madness that passes for sophisticated and even expert opinion on foreign affairs. He did not debate with fools, however celebrated, but was wise enough to thunder instead. Those few who presented arguments he treated with the salutary harshness of the teacher of American political history he was at his core. Thus, he tried to save America from the folly of unending wars in the Middle East and malfeasant defenselessness in face of enemy missile attacks.
Full review here. There are further reviews by Richard Reinsch of Heritage, Will Morrissey of Hillsdale College, & William Anthony Hay of Mississippi State University.
Let me also recommend my eulogy for Codevilla from last year:
One of the great fighting men of American politics has died, Angelo Codevilla. He was born in 1943 in Italy, came to America as a teenager, then became a citizen in spirit, not just in paperwork: He rejoiced & suffered in America’s virtues & vices, greatness & misery; he knew right & wrong, he knew the difference between courage & cowardice, & he acted unhesitatingly on his unusual knowledge of foreign affairs; more, he served America in the military, then as staff in the Senate, finally, as college professor & writer on political matters. He had a private life, but that belongs to his family; his public life concerns everyone who loves America, because it reveals better than almost anything now available to us the powers democracy summons & liberalism educates. More than most men, he lived up to his name.
& another PoMoCon post on the man, by our own Pavlos Papadopoulos:
The late, great Angelo Codevilla, whose memorial Mass was celebrated in Washington, D.C., yesterday, had planned to give the Constitution Day lecture at my college this past September. Health conditions caused him to postpone the lecture to November. In the intervening months our nation lost perhaps the most acute critic of our decaying regime.
The working title of the lecture that Codevilla planned to give was, I am informed, “From Virtuous Republic to Despotic Force via Incompetent Oligarchy.” The title is not surprising to anyone who followed Codevilla’s regime-analysis over the past two decades; nor is its boldness in frankly stating the uncomfortable truth as he saw it.
Wonderful you wrote this, Titus. I never met the man -- always hoped I eventually might -- but I’ve felt a distinct sadness ever since his death. It’s as if he was just hitting his stride in his thinking in the last decade of his life. Seems it’s often that way with truly thoughtful men. We were robbed of one of the great ones.
You're right--with a bit of time, he could have become the leader of a school of thought on statecraft for the new generation.
Thanks for the kind word!