To Understand Our Leaders - Read This.
New Yorker has an interesting feature on Machiavelli:
“A prince, particularly a new prince, cannot afford to cultivate attributes for which men are considered good. In order to maintain the state, a prince will often be compelled to work against what is merciful, loyal, humane, upright, and scrupulous”
“Men must be either flattered or eliminated, because a man will readily avenge a slight grievance, but not one that is truly severe”
“How one lives and how one ought to live are so far apart that he who spurns what is actually done for what ought to be done will achieve ruin rather than his own preservation.”
The great republic of his own era had failed because the men entrusted with its liberties did not know how to fight for them. He had seen his friend Soderini forfeit Florence by refusing to limit the freedoms ultimately employed against him by his enemies; that is, by trusting that goodness and decency could triumph over the implacable vices and envious designs of men.
Yet he (Borgia) was not a monster, if one considered the question of morals honestly, in terms of the good actually accomplished rather than the reputation created for oneself.
Machiavelli asserts that Borgia had thus proved more genuinely merciful than the Florentines, who, guarding their reputation, had allowed the town of Pistoia to be destroyed by factional fighting rather than intervene with their own arms. “A prince, therefore, must not fear being reproached for cruelty,” he concludes, issuing one of the memorably black-hearted maxims that do not mean exactly what they say.
We insist that our leaders convince us that they are exemplary and (increasingly) God-fearing human beings, who are nevertheless able to protect us from enemies not so constrained. How is this to be done? Do we really want to know?
I wonder who else when watching “The Dark Knight” and heard this line thought of the PAP and more specifically MM:
he’s the hero Gotham deserves … but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero … he’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector … a dark knight.
The real leaders/heroes can take it.
