The Prince

One of the most highly acclaimed philosophers of the Renaissance era was Niccolo Machiavelli. Born near Florence, Italy, he was appointed second Chancellor of Florence after attending the University.
He was later brought down by Medici ruling, and was imprisoned and tortured for several weeks.
His most famed piece of work is The Prince. This is a very political piece of work, and it explains his views on how the government is ran. “Power characteristically defines political activity,” (Stanford Ency. ). The Prince still stands today as a very influential piece of work for modern politics.  This website gives a brief biography and summaries of his famed work. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/machiavelli/


There are several major excerpts that our book gives of The Prince. The most interesting one to me is “How a Prince Should Keep His Word.” Machiavelli states how a prince i.e. a leader, should always be of beastly nature pertaining to a lion or a fox, something in between. As a prince, you must be able to be both scary like a lion, and smart like a fox.  I truly see this in politics all over the world. Leaders have to show potential of being able to protect their territories, their countries, to not so much “scare” other countries away, but most definitely intimidate enemies. But they must be able to outwit sticky situations they might get involved in.
Leaders, or potential leaders, always make promises to cast in the people, to win their trust, but they can easily break them once they are in power. Machiavelli states that “A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promises.” Of course there are always reasons, but sometimes they are excuses disguised as reasons. They just word it eloquently enough to justify the breaking of promises.
One example is how President Obama promised to fix out of state tuition. I’m not here to bash our leader, as I know he has many things on is plate, but he made it seem like a priority. Of course, he made it seem as a priority only when speaking to college students, or people to whom this promise would appeal to. Technically, the promise hasn’t been broken, but might as well, he only has one assured year left in office, and tuition is still 175 per credit in a Southern California community college for an out of state resident.

I found an essay giving the examples of how The Prince has influenced American politics. Chapter 18, the one mentioned above, gave the sense of how Machiavelli encouraged lying, praised it, and found it absolutely necessary to conduct good governing. His writing might be biased, but he gives an example of how George H.W Bush (by Americans) was never held accountable for the “deadly consequences of his interventionalist foreign policy. The point he was making, that reflects that of Machiavelli’s writing , is that war was cause of a half-truth given by the President. But as supporters, Americans allow his reasoning to prevail, and ignore the facts. As a leader, he is well advised to manipulate around these “lies,” to appeal to the public. And that, if in accordance to Machiavelli’s writings, is one of the traits a leader cannot do without.
Link to essay, very interesting points made all throughout.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0508i.asp