ConservativeINC

Machiavelli has been derided in popular culture as the guy who advocates lying, cheating, stealing and every other vice to get what you want. He is seen as a proponent of monarchy and his writings are seen by those who mostly have never read them as being the blueprint for underhandedness. I am here to say that that all is false.

Some things are true no matter how much you want to believe them or not. Machiavelli knew this and wrote about it. He also said that the best form of government is a republic, for example. That you should never use mercenaries if you wanted to win a war. Lying to the public is sometimes necessary and if the ruling government is seen as immoral then the country is assuredly lost.

His ideal government was Rome not because it was corrupt or good at ruling people. It was the best government because it lasted longer than any other and did so, mostly, without losing the morality of its citizenry.

Reading his books is sobering because there is mounds of support he uses to make his points. After reading The Prince and The Discourses (I have yet read The Art of War) I find myself in a better position to understand why governments do what they do or, at least, what they should be doing.

The most striking piece of wisdom I got out of the two books I read was this:

For Principality easily becomes Tyranny. From Aristocracy the transition to Oligarchy is an easy one. Democracy is without difficulty converted into Anarchy. So that if anyone who is organizing a commonwealth sets up one of the three first forms of government, he sets up what will last but for a while, since there are no means whereby to prevent it passing into its contrary, on account of the likeness which in such a case virtue has to vice.

From The Discourses

Another, more harsh and maybe more cynical view can be found here:

…when cities or provinces have been accustomed to live under a prince and his line becomes extinct, being on the one hand used to obeying and on the other deprived of their leader, they cannot agree among themselves in the selection of a new one and do not know how to live in freedom. Hence they are slower to take up arms, and a prince may more easily win them and hold them. But in republics there is greater vigor, greater hatred, greater desire for revenge, and the memory of earlier freedom cannot and will not let them rest. Thus, the surest procedure is either to destroy them or to live in them.

From The Prince

The Prince is by no means idealistic, to say the least. But it does give clues about how to deal with a world that is still governed by laws that were well known in Machiavelli’s time, i.e. countries in the Middle East.

Both of these books are definitely worth the price of admission because they at the most basic level change your way of thinking more towards the country level than towards the individual level of politics. And, if these two books are any indication that means The Art of War is also worth the price, if not, I will tell you after I have read it.

The much maligned Machiavelli is definitely overshadowed by contemporaries like Da Vinci but his works are still as much on the mark today as they were when they were written. BigT