Journal: US Ruling Class versus Country Class–Deep Insights, Need Integrity and Fact-Based Deliberation

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Officers Call, Open Government, Policy, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
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America's Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution

By Angelo M. Codevilla from the July 2010 – August 2010 issue of American Spectator

EXTRACT 1:  They [the bi-opoly two parties] think, look, and act as a class.

EXTRACT 2: The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century's Northerners and Southerners — nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, “prayed to the same God.” By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God “who created and doth sustain us,” our ruling class prays to itself as “saviors of the planet” and improvers of humanity. Our classes' clash is over “whose country” America is, over what way of life will prevail, over who is to defer to whom about what. The gravity of such divisions points us, as it did Lincoln, to Mark's Gospel: “if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”

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Review: Informing Statecraft–Intelligence for a New Century

4 Star, Diplomacy, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Strategy

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4.0 out of 5 stars Informing Policy is more important than stealing secrets,

April 8, 2000
Angelo Codevilla

“It is not too gross an exaggeration that when considering any given threat, DIA will overestimate, CIA will underestimate, and INR will blame the U.S. for it.” From his opening chapter and his distinction between static, dynamic, and technical facts, on through a brilliant summary of the post-war spy on page 103 and lengthy sections on how we've gotten it wrong, how we can get it right, and what is needed in the way of reform, I found this book worthy of study. An analyst and political staffer by nature, the strength of this book rests on the premise in the title: that intelligence should be about informing policy, not about collecting secrets for secrets' sake.

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