The American Spectator : Ruling Against the Ruling Class

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Note From the Publisher

Ruling Against the Ruling Class

By Alfred S. Regnery from the September 2010 issue

Introducing our new September issue -- and the new book The Ruling Class, an expanded version of Angelo Codevilla's summer issue blockbuster. You can order it now!

The liberal elite has been redefined. Call it the Ruling Class, and the rest of us the Country Class.

In the last issue we published one of the longest pieces ever to appear in The American Spectator, Angelo Codevilla's "America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution." We knew it was a tour de force when we published it, but we had no idea of the reach that it would have. As soon as the issue found its way to our subscribers and onto the newsstands, we started getting calls, emails, letters, and the rest. "Required reading," we were told. "Essential." "A must read." And so on. After a couple of weeks, we posted the piece on the Spectator website, and more comments came piling in. And a couple of days later, Rush Limbaugh spent his entire show-three hours-talking about it. "I very seldom use the word important," said El Rushbo, "and Angelo Codevilla's piece is important."

It then went viral on the Internet. Our website was jammed for days, the piece was discussed on hundreds of websites, and none of us involved with the Spectator could go anywhere without hearing about "this fantastic piece by Codevilla." The essay has now been turned into a book, available early in September on www.spectator.org, and in the bookstores. The whole episode has restored our faith in the impact that a small opinion journal can have.

Rush Limbaugh remarked that a lot of things fell into place when he read "America's Ruling Class," and indeed they do. Consider a few of the people and issues floating around the newsrooms: Elena Kagan. John Kerry's yacht. Chelsea Clinton's royal wedding. The Obama challenge to the Arizona immigration law and the federal court's first response. Obamacare and the people who will run it. Congress's 22 percent approval rating. A hundred thousand new federal employees. The NAACP and the Tea Party movement. And many more.

A huge issue for the Ruling Class is guns, and we devote considerable space this month to the question of gun ownership and the Second Amendment to the Constitution. A 2009 CNN/Opinion Research poll found that more than 75 percent of Americans believe the Second Amendment "was intended to give individual Americans the right to keep and bear arms for their own defense." But don't count many of the ruling class in that 75 percent. You won't find them clinging to their guns and their religion.

First, gun lawyer Dan Peterson explains the splendid victory in the recent case of McDonald v. City of Chicago, where the Supreme Court ruled the Constitution actually meant what it said and found the gun ban ordinance in Chicago unconstitutional. Decided by a 5-4 majority, it is no less telling in what it reveals about the four dissenters in the case.

Like all card-carrying members of the Ruling Class, the high court's liberals hate the Second Amendment and don't believe it actually means what it says. Guns are not politically correct, you see, and even though the Constitution clearly protects the right to have them, these elitists know better what is good for us. In their minds it is fine for the Constitution to protect things it does not mention such as abortion, sodomy, and racial preferences, but things specifically mentioned? Please.

Jim Antle, one of our political reporters, discusses the politics of gun ownership and the dilemma faced by a powerful organization in maintaining its clout, particularly as it tries to influence the Ruling Class while defending the interests of its Country Class members. The National Rifle Association has become one of the largest, richest, and most feared lobbies in Washington, with a vast and vociferous membership. It can have enormous impact on issues involving guns, and has been successful on many fronts. But at times-including the present-it has struck compromises offensive to its vast membership in order to maintain its political power.

One thing you can count on is that the battle over guns is one the Ruling Class wishes would just go away -- but only on its terms, of course.

About the Author

Alfred S. Regnery is the publisher of The American Spectator. He is the former president and publisher of Regnery Publishing, Inc., which produced twenty-two New York Times bestsellers during his tenure. Regnery also served in the Justice Department during the Reagan Administration, worked on the U.S. Senate staff, and has been in private law practice. He currently serves on several corporate and non-profit boards, and is the Chairman of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute .

His first book, Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism, was published in 2008. The book has been praised as one of the best authoritative accounts on the history of the American conservative movement.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (47) | Leave a comment

Ken (Old Texican)| 9.1.10 @ 7:00AM

Mr. Regnery,
its great to see you in print again.

I guess I made myself look sorta' stupid with my initial take on the Codevilla article, but having been an avid TAS and AT reader for a couple of years, I did not realize that many people had just not thought things through to the depth Mr. Codevilla laid them out.

Heh, I'm so glad he went ahead and wrote the book.
I'll get a copy.

Alan Brooks| 9.1.10 @ 4:16PM

Codevilla is a libertartian fool.
Libertarianism is the GOP in disguise. You wont get away with it-- you'll win this november, but not in 2012.

Bilwick| 9.2.10 @ 9:48AM

Care to elucidate, Captain Syllogism?

Alan Brooks| 9.8.10 @ 8:33PM

Codevilla is part of the ruling class; and his boilerplate about "latinos have enriched America"-- thats the biggest platitude in identity politics today. Politics is now a game like football, only a sucker would be tricked by the sound and fury of political manipulation in the year 2010.
The rich own this country and always will.

As far as I know the only real progress today is scientific, if that even. IMO social progress ended in the last decade, and now it is illusory.

jumpcuts| 9.1.10 @ 8:20AM

An audio recitation of the text would make a perfect commuter companion as the days roll to November.

Alan Brooks| 9.1.10 @ 4:21PM

Or to listen to while sitting on the can.
Codevilla is a libertarian; there are simply not enough good people to build a free world-- only out of touch intellectuals fail to see so in the year 2010.
Libertopianism is in an outmoded 1968-type philosophy, a rightwing version of do-your-own-thing. Do your own thing as long as someone else's family gets hurt.

dac| 9.1.10 @ 5:06PM

Brooks, you are so laughably wrong about Mr. Codevilla, I can't even begin to tell you; he is nowhere near the libertarian pole on most things, but it's revealing that you so detest (or are so afraid) of freedom, that anyone who supports it rationally is automatically labeled with a moniker that you consider distasteful.
"There are not enough good people to build a free world," what a perfect example of the kind of elitist prick that this article says Americans who value freedom must fight against. Feel free to leave the country and go start your own Lord of the Flies island with all the "good people" whom you choose. The fact is that you can't imagine supporting or protecting yourself or (if you have one that hasn't disowned you) your family without the Leviathan stealing from others who value freedom and the Constitutional order our Founders gave us. Slithery little welfare-addicted pukes like you can't live comfortably off of people who value their freedom, so you purport to insult it as merely "do your own thing." No moral content to freedom in your world, of course, as right and wrong have long been banished from your world view. How about this: leave us alone. Go fritter away your pointless existence--but if you come to try to take the few freedoms we have left from us, you'll get what you deserve, and your tiny guts won't even be enough to feed the local stray dogs.

Alan Brooks| 9.1.10 @ 6:10PM

What is freedom without virtue?

every miscreant in the 'Hood wants freedom.
Every burglar wants the freedom to break and enter.
Every pimply dope dealer in HS wants the freedom to sell dope.
Every Polanski and Jackson wants the freedom to babysit your grandkids.

Add it all up and you'll see the distinction between liberty and licence is an academic one. Dac, do you think the future will be less depraved than the past? if you do, guess again.
You will have to check the locks on your doors more in the future, not less. When you get to Heaven, then you are free-- not before.
Freedom without virtue is illusory. Dac: if you would go outdoors more, and look around very carefully, you will see this is so; if you do not, then you will be as an intellectual who thinks the peace in his writing room is representative of the outside world.

Osamas Pajamas| 9.2.10 @ 2:04AM

Geez, Brooks, you never tire of whizzin' on people who just want to enjoy the unalienable and perfectly-natural and universally-valid human rights of life, liberty, private property, and the pursuit of personal happiness.

The first article of private property is "the self" and all other rights are derivatives of and flow from these cardinal rights. These rights ----The Rights of Man ---- are the gift of nature or of nature's god ---- and they belong to all human beings, everywhere.

You say that freedom can't exist without virtue, and that is true, but I'm betting that the virtue of selfishness --- self-generated, self-sustaining action --- is not what you mean by virtue. Maybe you'd find it virtuous for a man to give up his freedom, but if so, then how does his virtue protect his freedom, having given it up? You appear to think that liberty and licence are very nearly identical, but a libertarian seeks no license, for if you have unalienable rights such as the Founders insisted, then why on earth would you seek licence from anyone else for their exercise? The libertarian subscribes to The Rights of Man as indicated above, and recognizes that all men have the identical rights --- so why would you suppose conflict to arise under these circumstances, except when an attacker rejects those rights and therefore suffers retribution?

Well, anyway, I suspect that I'm talking to a quibbling doorpost. Time to hit the sack.

Tim*| 9.2.10 @ 5:47AM

Then again , what is Brooks without his contrarian snide act to get him some craved negative attention.

Bilwick| 9.2.10 @ 9:49AM

"Not everyone who has the Stockholm Syndrome is Swedish."

Bilwick| 9.2.10 @ 9:52AM

Could you detail how, given the power, you would limit my liberty, Alan? I mean, in what specific ways would you force me to act the way you want me to?

And then please tell me how you became the god of the rest of us.

Alan Brooks| 9.8.10 @ 8:51PM

If you are libertarian I don't trust you at all, any of you here who are libertarian. You ask " tell me how you became the god of the rest of us", but you elevate yourselves as gods, going on about you are only seeking liberty and all that horseflop
-- you want power! and the more you deny it the more everyone sees through it. Libertarianism is an outdated joke and Ayn Rand is a dead old crone in a mausoleum of your minds. Whittaker Chambers got it just so: "to a gas chamber go!" she was hissing from every page. The Libertarian party has an abysmal record of getting its candidates elected-- how many libertarians in the House? the Senate? in your community as aldermen or even dogcatchers?
If libertarianism is to be judged by its adherents records n shrinking the state, then libertarianism is as much of a failure politically as Communism.
Speaking of gods: Ayn Rand is the goddess who failed.
Above all, you think anyone these days doesn't know you want the state to give those you care about funds and or services? You fool NO ONE anymore. But go ahead, waste your precious time, read outmoded libertarian propaganda written by pigheads from the 20th century extreme edge of the Rightwing. I've been to libertarian and LP meetings, they shred each other, they are barracudas jealous of each other.
And you think I want to limit your liberties? you are doing so yourself by continuing to elect bad so-called conservative/libertarian candidates.

eagle275| 9.14.10 @ 10:19PM

That's why I have an M-14 with rds dipped in pigs blood.

Alan Brooks| 9.21.10 @ 5:32PM

But no defense tax exists; let someone else pay for the real guns, the ones much bigger than your M-14. Try going up against a rocket or mortar with a gun.
What is near-incredible is you think people don't know politics is all sound 'n' fury today, and public relations.

Katherine Lambert| 9.1.10 @ 9:23AM

Dear Sir:

American Spectator needs a housecleaning. Quinn should go work with Jonah Goldberg and Katherine Jean Lopez over there at NRO The Corner. Those folks adore Peggy Noonan and Tucker Carlson over there (VDH is an exception). Peggy Noonan is the new litmus test for RINO's in journalism for us yeehaws out in mid America. Quinn and Peggy are interchangeable, spineless political hacks in my book. Peggy worked for the great man himself and so she has absolutely no excuse and Quinn, well, some things can never be explained. Also Quinn tends to think Tiger Woods is important in this age when we are holding onto our constitution with our fingernails. If a true conservative journalist was given his bully pulpit at AmSpec I assure you they would find something better to think and write about in a politically oriented forum to progress the political battle forward for liberty and freedom.

Thank you.

Publius| 9.1.10 @ 10:33AM

Ben Stein can go with them.

Alan Brooks| 9.1.10 @ 6:15PM

"Slithery little welfare-addicted pukes"

Your grandparents? Gramps at one time waded into Iwo Jima, today he waddles into the tax office, to make sure his bebefits aren't taxable.
Dear, dear old Grampy.

Grand Old Gramps.

Alan Brooks| 9.1.10 @ 6:17PM

G. rand
O. ld
P. appy

Petronius| 9.1.10 @ 9:29AM

I look forward to Peterson's piece and will have at the expanded Ruling Class. I expect it to parallel Dr. Sowell's Vision of the Anointed.
There is one thing that the leadership of the Republican Party consistently fails to understand, or just doesn't gave a ratsrearend. Conservative voters, and especially Gun Owners demand political purity in any candidate. We want those individuals we elect to state their positions and stick to them. No horse trading, backsliding, and back room deals. Newt and the neocons set us back 40 years. If we prevail in November, the Republicans had better deliver in spades. We want our Freedom back: All of it!
FYI: I saw a great bumper sticker yesterday.
"Your Fair Share Is Not In my Wallet"

DRed| 9.1.10 @ 10:47AM

Yes, ideological purity is the most important thing. You should put your ideas in a little book. Maybe give it a red cover.

dac| 9.1.10 @ 12:04PM

DRed, you clever little Maoist monkey, with what part of "Your Fair Share is Not in My Wallet" do you disagree? Please be specific. Note also, the modern Left (the ideological successor to the Comintern, or, if you want to be charitable, the Socialist International) insists on ideological purity to a far more rigid degree than anyone on the conservative side. Petronius' objections are to RINOs who are quite simply, not conservative at all, or only in instances in which they find conservatism doesn't rub their patrician and elitist sensibilities the wrong way. Either address the issue or dry up and flake off, like a piece of old dogshit in the street, blowing away in the wind. A nice metaphor for what ought to and hopefully will happen to the American Left, by the way.

DRed| 9.1.10 @ 2:02PM

I can't say I disagree with any specific parts of your mildly clever bumper sticker.

Insisting on ideological purity is a terrible way to pick political leaders, no matter who is doing it.

Alan Brooks| 9.1.10 @ 6:20PM

Dac,
not that Codevilla is insincere, he is overly-optimistic.

Alan Brooks| 9.8.10 @ 9:33PM

What makes this all such an empty exercise is: you know very well the wealthy own this country.
As far as very long-term, I'm not interested in that sort of futurist blarney anymore. Leave it to Newt.
There will be more blacks and Mexicans who are rich, a more (literally) colorful ruling class-- but that's it. Those of you who want to be libertarian, go ahead, do whatever you wat, look at porn; smoke "medical" marijuana; cheat on your wives.
No one is likely to stop you.
Every man to the Devil his own way.

Alan Brooks| 9.8.10 @ 9:54PM

"Your Fair Share Is Not In my Wallet"

Correct, but your grandparents' share is in our wallets. You think there's a kid over the age of 16 who doesn't know wealthy old people want to get as much of the taxpayer pie as possible? if you only knew how the GOP is laughed at behind your backs:
"they tried to sell us McCain like he was an old car!"

Jennifer| 9.1.10 @ 11:01AM

My son, who is studying in one of the bluest of blue-state colleges, was blown away by the America's Ruling Class article. He insisted that I copy it so he could share it with his friends.

He gives me hope for our future.

Alan Brooks| 9.9.10 @ 7:03PM

But Codevilla is part of the ruling class. Your son is allowing himself to be taken in by a libertarian aristocrat? Which publik skool did sonny go to become dumbed down so far?
Let's pray your son doesn't switch his major to political science.

Finbarr Moran| 9.1.10 @ 11:21AM

I have always felt that melodrama was a tool of liberals, but in this case, I will make an exception.

After giving a copy of the Codevilla article to a conservative friend who is not on-line, I told him that history will probably judge this essay as a seminal document in the uprising of the citizenry, the country class, against an exceptionally arrogant, morally corrupt, and power-hungry elite that has evolved into the ruling class.

It is important that we view the November elections as but a Concord Bridge in this struggle. The ruling class mentality pervades all levels of government in this country. We must root out this attitude wherever it appears. Winning an election does not confer a level of infallibility that Roman Catholics accord the Pope on theological matters.

ds80| 9.1.10 @ 3:26PM

"infallibility that Roman Catholics accord the Pope"

If you're going to mention it, at least get it right. It is the infallible Holy Spirit who confers ex cathedra infallibility, not vox populi.

Finbarr Moran| 9.1.10 @ 3:55PM

I guess the whole bloody point is then incorrect. My apologies to the ruling class.

DS,
you clearly suffer from that tropical diease, laka-nookie. Do we have an accord?

Alan Brooks| 9.8.10 @ 9:57PM

" tropical diease, laka-nookie. Do we have an accord?"

Someone crapped in your mind and forgot to flush it, Moran.

Siegfried X| 9.1.10 @ 12:12PM

This article points out some important facts, but the "class" approach is really not helpful. It is better to explain those facts by politics.

The important fact the article points out is that Democrats are happy with their party, while only one-fourth of Republicans say that their party "represent them well". The author then correctly says that is because Republican politicians act like Democrats.

However, talk of a "ruling class" doesn't explain why so many Republican politicians have changed from conservative to left-wing. In 1996 we had a real Reagan conservative Congress passing real legislation like the Contract with American and the Defense of Marriage Act.

Yet within 4 years the national Republican Party had abandoned conservatism and become a clone of the Democratic Party. Lots of the people involved were long time Republican politicians, meaning that their decision to imitate the Democrats didn't involve a change in "class".

The simpler explanation for the leftward shift is self-preservation. Those Republican politicians decided that the "progressives" are too powerful to overcome in the long term, meaning that they will win eventually.

The Republican politicians responded in two ways. Some of them effectively joined the Democrats, becoming Republicans In Name Only (RINOs). The rest decided that they needed to fight like scouts who are far behind enemy lines, and badly outnumbered. They keep quiet and avoid most fights, basically battling only to survive.

Ken (Old Texican)| 9.1.10 @ 12:42PM

Siegfried
Good thoughts well written. Thanks.

Siegfried X| 9.1.10 @ 12:42PM

A better analogy would be the Republican politicians doing a fighting retreat. Those who haven't gone RINO don't think they can win, so they basically are doing acts of defiance while retreating. They are trying to slow the Democratic machine a little, to postpone amnesty for illegals a few more years, to preserve the sanctity of marriage for a little longer...

John II| 9.1.10 @ 5:02PM

As usual, Siegy, your comments seem to me spot-on, but there are a few aspects of the RINO issue that seem to me to get shortshrift in these discussions.

1. Codevilla estimates that a basically conservative optic shapes the lives of at least two-thirds of Americans, but reflection on that optic is another matter. Any fourteen-year-old can understand the claims of an ideology well enough to articulate them in a high school debate, but it takes mature judgment and some depth of knowledge and grace of articulation to give expression to the conservative optic. (I avoid the term "conservatism" deliberately because it smacks of ideology.)

The distinctive political advantage of the Democrats is that their ideas are proper to the mind and heart of a fourteen-year-old (which helps explain why so many prominent Democrats behave like emotional adolescents: Clinton, the Kennedys, Kerry, the Professor, etc.). The advantage is that their ideas are easy to articulate and require little reflection to absorb, so that many folks of normally conservative disposition can be distracted into supposing the ideas are in some way of service to fundamental notions of decency and fairness.

To counter such superficially beguiling ideas requires hugely greater mental and spiritual resources than one needs to promote them. Not too many politicians, whatever their instincts, are up to the task, and Republicans are the only American politicos who need to be up to such a task.

2. The RINO trouble, however, has a silver lining. The get along-get ahead soul-set of such folks, although perennially a moral problem, is not so much of a political problem IF you have sufficient numbers of principled and articulate conservatives to persuade them, subliminally, that the direction to move in order to get along is rightward. And I would place that number at about one-third of the whole.

Given a body of 100 Republican politicians, in other words, if only 34 are conservatives of considered reflection and articulation, you've got almost 100 conservative votes on almost all major issues.

I think things are looking up.

And now back to that great 1939 Jimmy Stewart flick, Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

Siegfried X| 9.1.10 @ 5:40PM

I see the point, but the problem is that there is a ratchet-like situation where each left-wing victory is permanent and irrevocable, while each conservative victory is just a temporary delay of the inevitable.

Once people are actually receiving money from the government, it becomes infinitely more difficult to take it back. Like when spending cuts were tried by Reagan and Gingrich, the left-wing media was full of pictures of babies who allegedly were going to be killed by the cuts. "Put a face on it" is there motto. Once laws are helping corporations, they fight with all their strength to avoid change.

So what really matters is how many RINOs and Democrats are in Congress, not how many conservatives. Like with ObamaCare: it's like scoring a touch down, that once the ball is over the goal line, in reality it can't be taken back. All the progressives need is to, for a single moment, put together enough Dems + RINOs to pass the bill, and they have a permanent victory.

Also I've never seen RINOs like Snowe and Collins listen to conservatives, and become Reagan Republicans. It is mostly the other way, that years of media pressure makes conservatives into RINOs. Like a Republican article said "Orrin Hatch still wants to be Ted Kennedy".

The bottom line is that it seems that most Republican politicians think that we have already lost, so they don't want to spend time fighting over it. Like the Bush Republican congress, they think the only worthwhile and safe negotiations are to change a Democratic bill 10%, to protect their districts and pass out pork. Democrat lite.

In fact Boehner is already talking about how No Child Left Behind should be a model for legislation if Republicans win the House. He wants to open up debate so the minority (Democrats) have more power to change the legislation.

Siegfried X| 9.1.10 @ 5:45PM

Another reason why every left-wing victory is permanent is because the Republicans in Congress have no offense. They don't have a platform or even try to move the ball to the right. It's been 10 years since they had a real conservative proposal, like something to seriously cut spending. They can't even agree on repealing ObamaCare. The Republican agenda is usually just defense, to stop some of the Democratic platform.

John II| 9.1.10 @ 6:26PM

And a strictly defensive position is a formula for disaster in war and politics and sports alike, utterly demoralizing.

Well--I agree, and the general culture's been in a tailspin for something like three generations now, which doesn't bode well at all for a sensible politics.

But I've been watching this stuff since the latter portion of the Eisenhower era, and I don't recall any time when there was so much of such clarity about what the hell's gone wrong.

Part of Reagan's legacy, I recall, was to expand public discourse to a much broader airing of issues to a much broader audience by a considerably broader range of analysis and opinion. I am old enough to remember when conservative thinking was truly marginalized, pretty much confined to National Review, the old Reader's Digest, and Human Events.

If things DO turn around, it won't surprise me very much to learn that it takes more than a generation for good ideas to jell in the public square and take hold of the public imagination. But if things DON'T turn around, and the grisly pattern you describe continues, I'm afraid that it won't surprise me at all.

So I'm hopeful, but not optimistic.

Consider me deflated. When I'm finished with "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," I shall turn to Spencer Tracy in the underrated John Ford flick "The Last Hurrah" (1958) for balance.

Siegfried X| 9.1.10 @ 8:26PM

The situation looks tough but we certainly are better off than 3 years ago, because now there is general awareness of the problem. Back then most conservatives were totally asleep and just voted for the RINO that the party chose, without even thinking about running better candidates in the primaries. And back then the RINO leadership pretty much had everyone hypnotized to spend 100% of our time bashing Democrats, so that we wouldn't notice what the RINOs are doing.

Finally the party is awake and someone has rattled the Republican establishment's cage. Win or lose at least we can die fighting now.

Nunya| 9.1.10 @ 2:12PM

I agree, good comments.

The saddest part is, I was brought up that there are some things worth fighting for, and some things that one should never compromise no matter what the cost. Unfortunately, the VAST majority of current Republicans apparently never heard that. It's "go along to get along" or "reaching across the aisle", or some other BS that allows more piece-of-crap legislation to get passed (ala "McCain-Feingold").

It's time that the Republican party grow a spine and start standing on principle--No retreat, No compromise, no quarter. Once they do this, they will find the vast majority of Americans will follow them. Until they do this, they will continue to lose their base, like myself.

scotchieguy| 9.1.10 @ 3:19PM

The dem. party wants to run us off the cliff in ten years. The repub. party wants to do it in fifteen. Forget about the BS about appointing conservative Supreme Court Justices. The republican party is really "democratic-light." They don't have any fight left in them, and so it is so much easier to just go along w/ the dems. That way they will be assimilated into the ruling class, where the real power is. Take Norm Coleman. He was the mushiest Senator in years. A perfect example of a ruling class wannabe. If I were king, I would make every high school student read and understand the article before he/she graduated.

Nunya| 9.1.10 @ 1:55PM

I read the essay, then printed a copy for myself to re-read, then emailed a copy of the article to all of my family members. I believe the essay was exceptionally well written, and spot on target with its point. I pray that this essay is the beginning of a turnaound of this country, but unfortunately I have very little faith that it will be. I guess I've become a cynic in my old age... :-)

Siegfried X| 9.1.10 @ 4:42PM

If the Democrats win an election, we've lost a battle.

If the Democrats take over the Republican Party, then we've lost the war.

jrjr| 9.1.10 @ 5:04PM

"Ruling Class" is an excellent expression that will probably get well worn. It certainly properly classifies those who spend more than 2 as a senator and 3 or 4 sessions as a rep in our Congress. Our state houses also need a heavy scrubbing to cleanse them. There is nothing crooked, dirty, or not-needed in the U.S. Congress that is not done on a smaller scale by the state's ruling class. Term limits anyone?

Bilwick| 9.2.10 @ 9:56AM

I would hazard a guess (based on several decades exposure to State-humpers) that people who object to Codevilla's "Ruling Class" probably either are a part of it, or want to be.

Christian Louboutin| 6.23.11 @ 6:14AM

It then went viral on the Internet. Our website was jammed for days, the piece was discussed on hundreds of websites, and none of us involved with the Spectator could go anywhere without hearing about "this fantastic piece by Codevilla."