Angelo M. Codevilla is professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University and has taught political theory and international relations at Princeton and Georgetown. A native of Italy, he became a U.S. citizen in 1962. He studied philosophy and politics with Gerhart Niemeyer at Notre Dame and Leo Strauss at Claremont. After serving in the U.S. Navy as an officer in the Atlantic Fleet and teaching political science, he entered the U.S. Foreign Service and served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. President Reagan named him to his 1980 transition teams for the State Department and the Intelligence agencies. A decade as a senior research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution followed, as well as a dozen books among which are The Character of Nations, a translation of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Married to the former Ann Blaesser since 1966, Angelo Codevilla lives in California’s Sierra foothills where he grows wine grapes commercially.
This essay is part of a series examining how American religious, economic, and political freedom are compatible with Christian views of a good society. It was provoked by the publication of the Tradinista Manifesto, which called for “Christian socialism” and…