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Niccolò Machiavelli, a political analyst of the
European Renaissance, made his mark with his book The
Prince,1 in which he attempted to re-ingratiate
himself into the ruling Medici family of Venice by
offering them advice on how to rule. His particular
political ideology is famous for being ruthless and
conniving. From him comes the phrase, “the ends
justify the means,” meaning that, if an orderly and
efficient society is created by a certain ruler, his
manner of pursuing this result is irrelevant. Today,
the political correctness police tends to condemn this line of thinking,
mostly
for
public relations purposes. The idea today is that we
should be sensitive to the needs of everyone. We like
diplomacy.
Nonetheless, the fact of the matter is
that we now live in a very divided nation. Approval
of President Bush has been inconsistent,2 meaning his “rule”
is weak, or at least unstable. However, he has some Machiavellian
techniques of retaining it, and could ameliorate his
position if only he used more. Many would agree that
today is reflective of the European Renaissance in
many ways; ideas conceived during that time can prove
useful to us today. President Bush could improve his
position as President by taking the advice given in
Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince.
The first mistake President Bush made was his
“bipartisan” 2000 presidential campaign. He promised to make both
sides
content, and, naturally, failed. Taking
Machiavelli’s advice may have aided this process for
him. “...You may find that you have enemies in all
those whom you have injured in seizing the Princedom,
yet cannot keep the friendship of those who helped you
gain it; since you can neither reward them as they
expect, nor yet, being under obligations to them, use
violent remedies against them” (p 2). This can be
likened to Bush’s clumsy approach to assumption of
power. He decided to run his campaign in a
“bipartisan” manner, claiming he could make decisions
that, though he was a rather right-wing Republican,
could please the masses, liberal and conservative.
Unfortunately for him, he was bound to disappoint
many, and enrage even more all those who were so
adamantly opposed to his election. His campaign was
fairly weak, and he should have found a way to avoid
at all costs such a rift as the one he caused upon
being inaugurated.
President Bush’s dubious election is still being
scrutinized by his dissenters; Machiavelli warned
against such methods, and therefore would have proved
useful to Bush then, as well. This was his second
mistake. The election made him many enemies. “For
however strong you may be in respect of your army, it
is essential that in entering a new Province you
should have the good will of its inhabitants” (p 2).
Unfortunately, Bush did not manage this, and had to
make up for it. He managed to recover quite well, due
to a stroke of luck involving an outpouring of
patriotic affection.2 However, had he managed to
assume the position of President with fewer qualms on
the part of the USA, his reign would be smoother.
Bush has been wrestling with dissenters since he first
appeared in office three years ago; his methods could be
improved (for his purposes) via Machiavelli’s advice
on the matter. In the section of The Prince entitled,
“Of Cruelty and Clemency; And Whether It Is Better to
be Loved or Feared,” Machiavelli discussed the
benefits of cruelty over kindness in a ruler, as well
as the necessary nature of said cruelty. “A prince,”
he wrote,
“should therefore disregard the reproach of being
thought cruel where it enables him to keep his
subjects united and obedient. For he who quells
disorder by a very few signal examples will in the end
be more merciful than he who from the too great
leniency permits things to take their course and so to
result in rapine and bloodshed; for these hurt the
whole State, whereas the severities of the Prince
injure individuals only (p 43).” If taken into account by President
Bush,
he could gain
a much stronger hold on his power. Perhaps he needs
not take such extreme measures as they would in the
Renaissance, such as public executions, but find a
more modern method of showing the American public that
it is unwise to disagree. This is not necessarily an
“ethical” course of action, but one that would most
likely unite the people. One of Machiavelli’s main
points in this section is indeed that it is preferable
for a ruler to be feared by the people ruled: “Men
love at their own free will, but fear at the will of
the prince, and...a wise prince must rely on what is
in his power and not what is in the power of others,
and he must only contrive to avoid incurring
hatred...”(p 45) People respond more strongly with
fear than with love. Love is a precarious, easily
destructible state of affairs, a delicate matter.
Striking fear into the hearts of the masses, however,
is a different question. It is delicate in the sense
that, one must not inspire hatred. Hatred spoils the
entire system. Hatred spawns revolt. The proper
amount of fear, however, results in a strong hold on a
country full of people.
“Fear and the absence of hatred may well go together,
and will always be attained by one who abstains from
interfering with the property of his citizens and
subjects...And when he is obliged to take the life of
anyone, let him do so when there is a proper
justification and manifest reason for it, but above
all he must abstain from taking the property of
others...”4
In the USA we have, and frequently use as punishment,
the death penalty. Most people here would agree that
it is more important to protect ourselves from
unreasonable search and seizure (as the Fourth
Amendment guarantees us), than from being put to death
for more serious crimes. In fact, many people
outwardly support capital punishment. This is to say,
people are able to respect execution and fear it
properly without hating the government for using it as
a form of punishment. However, the second a
government agent enters a home without a warrant,
there will be a public outcry against such activity;
there is a characteristic paranoia in this country
about surveillance. The newspapers and magazines
constantly print stories about government
surveillance; the Internet is rich with Web sites on
the subject. However, the number of these concerning
the death penalty is significantly fewer. In this
respect as well, today’s politics are similar to those
of the Renaissance.
Foreign policy is a touchy subject in today’s
politics, a precarious affair, and it was
significantly less so in the Renaissance; however,
some wise practices of that day are also wise courses
of action in the modern world. In The Prince,
Machiavelli makes a number of analogies to times past
in Europe. One particularly relevant one is this:
“[France’s King] Louis, then, had made these five
blunders. He had destroyed weaker States, he had
strengthened a Prince already strong, he had brought
into the country a very powerful stranger, he had not
come to reside, and he had not sent colonies” (p 7).
While it is not recommended to create colonies, most
of this analysis is useful today as well. A blunder
Bush has imitated, for instance, is the destruction of
a “weaker State,” namely Afghanistan, which we have
nuked most thoroughly back to the Stone Age. It
has done us very little good and created a stir among
more aware and liberal citizens. The nation,
realistically, posed very little threat to ours, yet
the bombs dropped. This is an example of the folly
made by an administration that looks rarely to the
past for aid. We wasted military energy bombing a
country unnecessarily and without real reason.
Another analogous indiscretion is that of not
“com[ing] to reside.” The President does not travel
nearly often enough. Given, he has had bad luck with
the practice, but nonetheless it’s got to be done. In
order to understand and gain the respect of foreign
countries, one must visit and show respect to them.
George Bush could use the writings of Niccolò
Machiavelli to his advantage in his political work.
His power could be more secure with the help of
the Renaissance’s famous political writer. In regards
to both local and world politics, Machiavelli could
come to Bush’s aid. This is not necessarily an
ethical issue, because were politics an ethical issue,
the world would be a very different place today; no,
this is an issue of power and of order. Machiavelli’s
ideas can be transferred over to today’s political
situation and make sense and work with the present
circumstances, despite being 500 years old.
1. Edition of The Prince used: ©1992 Dover
Publications. Translated by NH Thomson.
2. It’s been on and off the fence, lingering around 50 percent.
3. There are those who would suspect that this was
not the works of chance at all, but a carefully
crafted plan by the Bush administration itself. We
shall now proceed to ignore these people for the sake
of the simplicity of this essay.
4. This excerpt taken from a slightly differently
translated copy of The Prince.
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