Niccolò Machiavelli, ever heard of him ?

[slack]

perhaps a good entrance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavelli

Sounds like history?
You're wrong.

[izzie]

1. Silly question any one interested in the subject we on DU .......

talk about must know who this man is.

[slack]

2. let's have a look at your president

ok. looks similar. he is a type of macciavelli.
But beside bush. Is it ok that kerry is also skulll & bones member?
No, I have to say no, it's not. Nobody cares?
The most people in Europe think it doesn't make a difference which president your're selecting. Two sides of the same coin.
I don't like to be Cassandra, you have free selection, you have to know what you want.

[Avonrepus]

3. I need to read 'the Prince'

by machiavelli for my politics course over next couple of days.

[Kamika]

4. Didn't Tupac rap about him?

I think he did something about Machiavelli

[ithacan]

5. "Mayberry Machiavellis"

that is what John DeIulio, who worked for a while in the White House as the person in charge of faith-based initiatives (I think) called them after he resigned.

Then there's also the Leo Strauss connection, a derivative of Machiavelli...

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15935

Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception
By Jim Lobe, AlterNet
May 19, 2003

What would you do if you wanted to topple Saddam Hussein, but your intelligence agencies couldn't find the evidence to justify a war? A follower of Leo Strauss may just hire the "right" kind of men to get the job done – people with the intellect, acuity, and, if necessary, the political commitment, polemical skills, and, above all, the imagination to find the evidence that career intelligence officers could not detect.

<snip>

Strauss is a popular figure among the neoconservatives. Adherents of his ideas include prominent figures both within and outside the administration. They include 'Weekly Standard' editor William Kristol; his father and indeed the godfather of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol; the new Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a number of senior fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (home to former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and Lynne Cheney), and Gary Schmitt, the director of the influential Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is chaired by Kristol the Younger.

<snip>

Rule One: Deception

It's hardly surprising then why Strauss is so popular in an administration obsessed with secrecy, especially when it comes to matters of foreign policy. Not only did Strauss have few qualms about using deception in politics, he saw it as a necessity. While professing deep respect for American democracy, Strauss believed that societies should be hierarchical – divided between an elite who should lead, and the masses who should follow. But unlike fellow elitists like Plato, he was less concerned with the moral character of these leaders. According to Shadia Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary, Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior."

<snip>

Second Principle: Power of Religion

According to Drury, Strauss had a "huge contempt" for secular democracy. Nazism, he believed, was a nihilistic reaction to the irreligious and liberal nature of the Weimar Republic. Among other neoconservatives, Irving Kristol has long argued for a much greater role for religion in the public sphere, even suggesting that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic made a major mistake by insisting on the separation of church and state. And why? Because Strauss viewed religion as absolutely essential in order to impose moral law on the masses who otherwise would be out of control.

<more>

[jean]

8. slack probably never watched 'The Andy Griffith Show' in Germany...

These folks don't rise to the level of Nicolo's vision hence the modifier "Mayberry."

Mayberry, North Carolina, the fictional setting for the classic television hit "The Andy Griffith Show," is a symbol for small-town simplicity and backwardness.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

White House Decries Ex-Aide's Criticism

The Associated Press
Monday, December 2, 2002; 11:15 AM

WASHINGTON –– President Bush's spokesman dismissed as "baseless and groundless" a former aides' criticism that the White House values politics over domestic policy and has failed to produce the president's promised "compassionate conservative" agenda.

John J. DiIulio Jr., who quit his White House domestic policy post in August 2001, said in an interview with Esquire magazine: "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: complete lack of a policy apparatus.

"What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavelli's ," he was quoted as saying.

>> snip

In the magazine interview, DiIulio called senior White House adviser Karl Rove "enormously powerful, maybe the single most powerful person in the modern, post-Hoover era ever to occupy a political-adviser post near the Oval Office."

>> snip

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~


The DiIulio Letter
CONFIDENTIAL
To: Ron Suskind
From: John DiIulio
Subject: Your next essay on the Bush administration
Date: October 24, 2002

http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2002/021202_mfe_diiulio_1.html

>> snip

This gave rise to what you might call Mayberry Machiavelli's—staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible.

>> snip

Like college students who fall for the colorful, opinionated, but intellectually third-rate professor, you could see these 20- and 30-something junior White House staff falling for the Mayberry Machiavelli's. It was all very disheartening to this old, Madison-minded American government professor. Madison aside, even Machiavelli might have a beef. The West Wing staff actually believed that they could pass the flawed bill, get it through conference, and get it to the president's desk to sign by the summer. Instead, the president got a political black eye when they could easily have handed him a big bipartisan political victory.

[Az]

6. After reading the Prince

I felt so sickened that I had to find an alternate to read. This lead me to The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Where the Prince builds a society of destruction the Art of War shows how to bring about real change with a minimum of damage.

Any society run on the Principals found in the Prince is short lived. The stress and tension created in the society by its means will tear apart any structure in short order. It turns people against themselves. It dismantles society.

[felonious thunk]

7. The Prince was written for selfish purposes

Machiavelli was mostly trying to get work for the Medici family at the time, and he wrote the Prince as a means to curry the favor of the family. Machiavelli may or may not have been aware of the strength of what he was writing, but ultimately it was a plan for the Medici family to increase its influence. Other writings by Machiavelli tone down the rhetoric a bit, although he clearly had contempt for the common man.

There is brilliance in his writing however. It's so simple and he put it in a lucid philosophical work.

[Az]

9. Not denying its brilliance

But its long term effects are devestating. It sacrifices everything to maintain control for a few. It should be required reading for simply this reason. We need to be able to recognise what tactics are being arrayed against us. We need to know our enemies and what they plan on doing to us. Sun Tzu has some recommendations on this and what to do with such information.

[felonious thunk]

12. I agree

Everyone should read both The Prince and The Leviathan as manuals for how not to govern and why we shouldn't trust leaders.

[CapnJackSparrow]

10. PBS

Niccolo was a chump, and "The Prince" was a sarcastic parody piece written in a bout of envy at the Medicis for having handed him his ass.

You should make an effort to look at histories of the Renaissance to discover the context.

[jean]

11. welcome Capn

“...So we’re all men of our word, really. Except for Elizabeth, who is – in fact – a woman.”

[Zolok]

13. Old Nicolo is a lot like Marx

to understand Marx one must plough through Das Capital...similarly to "get" Machiavelli one must read and internalize his "Discourses on Livy" in which the Italian writer lays down the precepts that must govern an enlightened republic.

www.chimesatmidnight.blogspot.com

[CapnJackSparrow]

14. Sucha a great movie...

...so many great lines.

Elizabeth: That's it, then? That's the secret, grand adventure of the infamous Jack Sparrow. You spent three days lying on a beach drinking rum.

Jack Sparrow: Welcome to the Caribbean, luv.

[dryan]

15. Machiavelli

Machiavelli wrote "The Prince" which is based on his good friend Ceasar Borgia -- the brother of Lucretia -- and the son of the Pope. Hey who doesn't know this?