Free Republic

The typical characterization of Niccolo’ Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) today is that of a cold advocate of raw force from which his devious students, petty princes in small kingdoms, kept themselves in power through treachery and fear. These are not the positive lessons that carried over from the Renaissance and down through The Enlightenment to the American Revolution. If anything, The Prince illustrated the consequences of lost liberty, the final corruption of a people too ignorant or frightened to preserve themselves. Alternatively, in Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli studied the long-lived Roman Republic and how the people kept their freedom for...

A Government of Others. Chapter 16 to Book I of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy is a handy field guide to President Trump’s cagefight with the Deep State. Few politicians comprehend the historic lessons in organizing and maintaining republics. Oh, they might know of them, but not with true understanding. They know incidents and events at a superficial level. To the extent they think at all, they disregard imitation as not only difficult but impossible; they disbelieve the constancy in human nature since antiquity.1 “Men,” wrote Machiavelli, “aren’t to be trusted except out of fear, not love.” This dim view has...