Free Republic

In our Constitutional order we find comforts unknown to many nations. We can go about our lives without concern over a matter that often threatened kingdoms since ancient times: succession to the executive power. Thanks to an Electoral College that avoids direct elections we safely affirm our Presidents. We needn’t fear the turmoil and angst that often attends the replacement of one king with another. And we do it every four years!Except, there is reason for concern. Despite its outward appearances there was a dangerous undercurrent to the 2016 Presidential election that warped post-election events. The outgoing President regarded his...

Through a series of lessons arranged in three Books, the thrust of Niccolo’ Machiavelli‘s Discourses on Livy deals with how nations in general, and republics in particular, can design, keep, and if necessary, restore free-government. The media for this exercise are the experiences, trials, successes and failures of the Roman Republic as related by Titus Livius (59BC – 17AD).J.G.A. Pocock, an historian at Washington University in St. Louis Missouri, coined the term “Machiavellian Moment” to identify the commencement of clear thinking in which civil society realizes that unless it takes corrective action, the corruption into which the nation has fallen...

The Roman historian Titus Livius (59BC – 17AD), better known as Livy, wrote, “History is full of fine things to take as models, and base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.” The thread than connects the three Books and dozens of chapters in Niccolo’ Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy is his continual comparison of the ideal to the corrupt. By corrupt is not meant so much the embezzler of public funds, who, in well-designed republican Rome posed little threat to freedom, but more importantly the inevitable assaults and high crimes on free institutions which, over time, led to the republic’s...

Regarding thoroughly corrupted republics, Machiavelli found that even when a few wise laws are passed, corrupt institutions in society and government will turn the law away from their intended, good purposes.To possibly recover, one of two things must happen. Either prudent men along the way step in to introduce reforms as incremental corruption is detected, or a large single stroke of reform is necessary when the debasement of society and government is evident to all. Since the republic in his discussion is already thoroughly corrupt, it would appear that the first of his possible solutions has been overcome by events.Still,...

The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.

In our Constitutional order we find comforts unknown to many nations. We can go about our lives without concern over a matter that often threatened kingdoms since ancient times: succession to the executive power. Thanks to an Electoral College that avoids direct elections, we safely affirm our Presidents. We needn’t fear the turmoil and angst that often attends the replacement of one king with another. And we do it every four years!Except, there is reason for concern. Despite its outward appearances, there was a dangerous undercurrent to the 2016 Presidential election that warped post-election events. The outgoing President regarded his...

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. “Men,” wrote Machiavelli, “aren’t to be trusted except out of fear, not love.” This dim view has a bright side, for it means men’s actions are somewhat predictable and the essentially repetitive nature of political actions can be a guide to contemporary events. While...

Through a series of lessons arranged in three Books, the thrust of Niccolo’ Machiavelli‘s Discourses on Livy deals with how nations in general, and republics in particular, can design, keep, and if necessary, restore free-government. The media for this exercise are the experiences, trials, successes and failures of the Roman Republic as related by Titus Livius (59BC – 17AD). J.G.A. Pocock, an historian at Washington University in St. Louis Missouri, coined the term “Machiavellian Moment” to identify the commencement of clear thinking in which civil society realizes that unless it takes corrective action, the corruption into which the nation has...

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote in The Prince (1505 in Italian, 1513 in English) what has been translated as “Never do an enemy a small injury.” If one is striking out at an opponent, one should make sure that the fatal blow is struck, successfully ending the confrontation. Machiavelli wrote that “the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”

Malcolm Moore Thursday, January 25, 2007 Five hundred years after he was killed in battle, the remains of Cesare Borgia, the notorious inspiration for Machiavelli's The Prince, are to be moved into a Spanish church. Banned from holy ground by bishops horrified by his sins, the remains of the ruthless military leader lie, at present, under a pavement in Viana in northern Spain. Borgia was the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, and was made a cardinal by his father at the age of 17. He was an accomplished murderer by 25 and had conquered a good part of Italy...

In our Constitutional order we find comforts unknown to many nations. We can go about our lives without concern over a matter that often threatened kingdoms since ancient times: succession to the executive power. Thanks to an Electoral College that avoids direct elections, we safely affirm our Presidents. We needn’t fear the turmoil and angst that often attends the replacement of one king with another. And we do it every four years! Except, there is reason for concern. Despite its outward appearances, there was a dangerous undercurrent to the 2016 Presidential election that warped post-election events. The outgoing President regarded...

Subtitle: Machiavelli on the Greatest Sedition - Whisper Campaigns As opposed to formal charges from a prosecutor, in which the accused has constitutional protections at his disposal, the accused in whisper campaigns typically finds little relief. High school girls are notorious for their vicious whisper campaigns against other girls. Long before social media, these terrible women, terribilis mulieres, made life so awful for their victims that even in old age, few forget the misery. [snip] Niccolo’ Machiavelli, in his Discourses on Livy, believed the Roman grand jury, with its power to indict and to clear names and reputations, regularly saved...

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!" wrote Sir Walter Scott in his poem "In Marmion" (1808, canto VI, stanza XVII). On AUGUST 19, 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Peter Carr: "He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions." The Greek philosopher...

Scandals in politics have been motivated by personal gain, greed, love of power, lust, or simply a conviction that one's political agenda is so good it justifies bending the law. This ungodly behavior was observed by Machiavelli in The Prince (1513), who recorded the evil tactics of Cesare Borgia: "the ends justifies the means." In 1798, Yale President Timothy Dwight described how the Jacobins acted this way during the French Revolution: "Adultery, assassination, poisoning, and other crimes of the like infernal nature, were taught as lawful ... provided the end was good." Saul Alinsky advocated this in his nefarious Rules...

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...

America doesn’t have a classic aristocracy. But, does it have an order set above the people? In Chapter IX of The Prince, Niccolo’ Machiavelli paused for a moment from advising kings who clawed their way to the crown through crimes and violence. Instead, in the constitutional principality, citizens elect one of their fellows to the kingship. Mentally replace the words aristocracy/nobility with Deep State when reading Chapter IX, and this lesson is as pertinent today as it was in the early 16th century. In the constitutional principality, Machiavelli observed that one of two groups of citizens make the new prince:...

Being armed or unarmed is, in many ways, a state of mind. An armed person sees the world differently from a person who has decided to be unarmed.  Nicolo Machiavelli, the famed author and political philosopher, states it well in The Prince: Because there is nothing proportionate between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed, or that the unarmed man should be secure among armed servants. Because, there being in the one disdain and in the other suspicion, it is not possible for...

Samantha | Age 22 | Old Bridge, New Jersey | Last Voted: 2016 2016 was such a disillusioning experience. Going into the election, I was so proud to be in this country at this moment, so proud to be voting for Hillary Clinton. I had my Clinton sweatshirt on all day. I was on Twitter telling people that if they didn’t vote they were dead to me — like the whole thing. Watching the results come in, it was just disheartening. My faith in the whole system was crushed pretty quickly. That was the first general election I could vote...

Activist David Hogg talks of his generation of gun controllers in a NYMag cover story, then thinks of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and says, “Move the f**k off the plate and let us take control.” NYMag indicates Hogg is wearied by the “old” Democrats who keep hanging onto their offices. He mentioned Pelosi in particular, and said pointedly, “Nancy Pelosi is old.”

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...