Machiavelli

I'm listening to an NPR radio show about Machiavelli, "The Prince" in particular. What strikes me initially is how far off the mark these guys have to be to take his suggestions as serious or accurate principles by which to govern.

The fact that people are capable of acting like animals doesn't mean they are no more than animals. The fact that you can force a people by starvation and degradation to be animalistic doesn't logically lead to the conclusion that they are naught but animals. The narrowness of Machiavelli's vision is striking -- sounds like a small man with a poor opinion of himself and similarly bad opinion of others.

And this would be a person we should select to guide political thought or action?

I suspect that his writings in fact serve a different purpose -- after-the-fact justification of bad leadership, poor decisions or out-and-out destructive or criminal actions.

Again, what's not remarkable is that someone would write this or believe it. What's remarkable is that more than a couple of people might seriously present his work as a valid or correct way to think about leadership.

If a guy starts out believing that all is destined to fail or be destroyed and that we're subject to the whims of a random, uncontrollable fortune, wouldn't it be logical to assume that his philosophy or approach would lead in that direction?

No matter how much he writes, he's not going to reach an escape velocity sufficient to surpass the constraints imposed by his small, starting assumptions.