Free Republic

Subtitle: What Would the Romans do? Foremost among the reasons I despise the democrat party is its destructive nature. It builds nothing; it exists to destroy. In the name of social justice, it corrupts and soils every previously noble institution it comes to dominate. ‘Divide and conquer’ is a tactic as old as warfare, and one which the democrat party puts to skilled use for its nefarious goals. Together with their fellow travelers in the media, they exploit every possible Alinsky distinction in race, wealth, education, gender, and sexual orientation. Keep society back on its heels. Keep various factions at...

Subtitle: Part I Niccolo’ Machiavelli. 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...

America 2016 is in a bad place. Our once republic of laws, in which carefully designed institutions served the noble ends enumerated in the Preamble to the Constitution, has been rendered into something resembling a criminal enterprise in which rulers serve their ambition and avarice while the nation suffers. What to do? While over the course of this blog I have rarely approached extra-constitutional means to restore free government, recent events demand a look at all options. What prompts my reevaluation are Hillary’s get-out-jail-free card from the FBI, and the administration’s ongoing efforts to silence, if not criminalize, political opposition....

If you believe, as Maurizio Seracini does, that Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest painting is hidden inside a wall in Florence’s city hall, then there are two essential techniques for finding it. As usual, Leonardo anticipated both of them. First, concentrate on scientific gadgetry. After spotting what seemed to be a clue to Leonardo’s painting left by another 16th-century artist, Dr. Seracini led an international team of scientists in mapping every millimeter of the wall and surrounding room with lasers, radar, ultraviolet light and infrared cameras. Once they identified the likely hiding place, they developed devices to detect the painting by...

The hunt for the "Battle of Anghiari," ...which Leonardo began in 1505 to commemorate the 15th-century Florentine victory over Milan at Anghiari, a medieval Tuscan town... unfinished when Leonardo left Florence in 1506... was given new impetus about 30 years ago, when Seracini noticed a cryptic message on a fresco in the hall by Giorgio Vasari, a 16th-century artist famed for chronicling Renaissance artists' labors. "Cerca, trova" -- "seek and you shall find" -- said the words on a tiny green flag in the "Battle of Marciano in the Chiana Valley." ...A few years ago, using radar and X-ray scans,...

A real-life Da Vinci mystery, complete with tantalizing clues and sharp art sleuths, may soon be solved, as researchers resume the search for a lost Leonardo masterpiece believed to be hidden within a wall in a Florence palace. Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli and officials in the Tuscan city announced this week they had given approval for renewed exploration in the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of power for various Florence rulers, including the Medici family in the 16th century. There, some researchers believe, a cavity in a wall may have preserved Leonardo's unfinished painted mural of the "Battle of Anghiari" for...

Maybe Vasari fresco refers to presence of greater art behind it ROME -- "Cerca trova" ("Seek and you shall find") is the tantalizing 5-century-old message painted on a fresco in the council hall of Florence's Palazzo Vecchio. Researchers now believe these cryptic words could be a clue to the location of a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting and are pressing local authorities to allow them to search for the masterpiece of Renaissance art. Maurizio Seracini, an Italian art researcher, first noticed the message during a survey of the hall 30 years ago, but his team lacked the technology then to...

Forget the Da Vinci Code. Dr Seracini thinks he's cracked art's biggest mystery Step by patient step, one man is drawing ever closer to the real Da Vinci mystery: tracking down the master’s greatest painting, lost for four and a half centuries. And it is hidden, he believes, in a room at the heart of political power since the Middle Ages in Florence. For art historians, finding Leonardo’s lost Battle of Anghiari is in the same league as finding the Titanic or the still lost tomb of the Ancient Egyptian architect Imhotep — as big as you can get. The...

Machiavellianism is "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct". The word comes from the Italian Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote Il Principe (The Prince), among other works. In Psychology In modern psychology, Machiavellianism is one of the dark triad personalities, characterized by a duplicitous interpersonal style, a cynical disregard for morality and a focus on self-interest and personal gain. Machiavellianism is also a term that some social and personality psychologists use to describe a person's tendency to be unemotional, and therefore able to detach him or herself from conventional morality and...

In his Discourses on Livy, Niccolò Machiavelli devoted several chapters to the importance of religion to the long-lived Roman Republic. There are lessons here for America 2016. Numa Pompilius, successor to Rome’s founder Romulus, was elected king in 716 BC. The tiny and precarious city-state was informally joined in self-defense with the nearby tribe of Sabines, of which Numa was a member. Livy credits Numa with establishing religious institutions that served to bind the Romans and Sabines into one people, a Roman Republic. Through his personal relationship with various gods, Numa built the intellectual supporting framework for various pageants, rites,...

Niccolo Machiavelli is what some have called the first modern analyst of political power.  Some have called him the founder of modern political science.  Others have compared him to the Devil, as he showed the moral underbelly of political power.  He is widely honored on the left as showing how to use power to stay in power.  Most of the people who know of Machiavelli know him from his most famous work "The Prince".  "The Prince" is essentially a short course on how to get and keep political power.  At the time it was written, it was a rather...

How did the sister of Machiavelli's prince get so wealthy during an economic downturn?In popular legend, Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara (1480- 1519), stands falsely accused of poisoning her second husband. Victor Hugo portrayed her in thinly veiled fiction as a tragic femme fatale. Buffalo Bill named his gun after her. But new research by USC historian Diane Yvonne Ghirardo reveals that the only sister of Machiavelli's Prince was less interested in political intrigue than in running a business, undertaking massive land development projects that "stand alone in the panorama of early sixteenth-century projects, not only those initiated by women,"...

Adversaries welcome Obama’s conciliatory actions that turn Machiavelli on his head, and they are likely to be joined by others, emboldened by a perceived window of opportunity remaining open through the end of the Obama administration The most quoted political wisdom from Machiavelli is that “it is better to feared than it is to be loved.” President Obama’s Middle East policy may well go down as the turning point in U.S. policy in which Machiavelli was turned on his head, setting the stage for the whirlwind of chaos and war. What is one to think about the Obama administration’s extended...

The accepted dogma among many conservatives is that the way to save what remains of our republic is to vote conservative, constitutionalist, virtuous men and women into office. History shows that to be a blind alley, a dead end that occupies many minds, all the while evil men get away with high crimes. It’s a pity that electoral history going back decades have failed to disprove their belief. Most of the conservative candidates we send to congress go wobbly, rino or worse. Meanwhile, no congressional rats ever turn conservative. Clearly, there is something outside the power of personal character and...

See the video here. Also, see the transcript here. Now for the main story:Jon Stewart Dismantles Chris MathewsIf you have ever bemoaned the turn Matthews -- a former newspaperman -- has taken in recent years, you have to check out what happened on "The Daily Show" on Tuesday night. Matthews called it "the worst interview ever." By Greg Mitchell (October 03, 2007) -- You may find this hard to believe, but there was a time when TV gasbag Chris Matthews was a respectable hard news reporter. He worked in Washington, D.C. for the San Francisco Examiner from 1987 to around...

Ample evidence engulfs us, with clear indications that no individual life, no natural law, no constitutional principle, religious tenant or human race on earth is safe from today's dark, governing ideology. Our highest elected and appointed officials, in both parties, believe millions of us are no longer the "right" kind of people and as a result, our personal safety is at risk while our liberties are being legislated away. Prince Niccolò Machiavelli (c 1527) writing in, "The Prince", famously wrote about the following "statebuilding" thought process; Anything can be done, no matter what the consequences may be, for the end...

With performances from Peter Capaldi, imagine. marks the 500th anniversary of Machiavelli's notorious book The Prince. Imagine Who's Afraid of Machiavell. This video has been recorded at the international conference on 'Machiavelli's The Prince: Five Centuries of History, Conflict, and Politics' at Brunel Unive. Celebrating the 500th Anniversary of Nicolo Machiavelli's seminal work The Prince The BBC's Tim Wilcox discusses Machiavellian ideals vs modern Italian politics.

A search engine sent someone here searching for “why are democrats eager to confiscate guns.” Essentially, to facilitate remaining in power, and for self preservation. And for the full answer to that, let me turn to the recognized expert on the topic. Niccolò Machiavelli wrote Il Principe, The Prince, which most rulers of the past 500 years have had on their nightstand. While The Prince should take up a quarter of one high school civics or government class, one chapter in particular should be read and understood by every gun owner.The title and chapter number varies with the translation, but...

... Obama is having Mitt Romney over for lunch on Thursday and their meeting is already generating a lot of buzz. Here are five theories about the White House’s motives.... 1. Obama is extending a common courtesy... 2. Obama will offer Romney a Cabinet job... 3. Obama will enlist Romney in the fiscal cliff debate... 4. Obama wants Romney’s advice on business issues... 5. Obama wants closure on the 2012 presidential election, or something else?....

GO AWAY already It's over dude... As you've most likely already heard, the TEA Party right has declared all-out war on Karl 'Boss Hogg' Rove in the wake of numerous recent (expen$ive) GOP disasters in which 'The Architect' played an inglorious starring role. The final straw was likely his lack of willingness to take responsibility for an almost complete lack of success in the 2012 election cycle, instead pointing fingers and making excuses like an Italian cruise ship captain. Rove's flat-out whiffing in almost every race he backed -on top of improbable Romney defeat- would be enough for any sensible...