What Machiavelli can teach us about why democracies fall.

[JHan]

https://www.vox.com/2017/7/24/15913826/machiavelli-donald-trump-democracy-america-erica-benner

“I’d like to teach them the way to hell, so they can steer clear of it.”

The infamous Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli wrote those words in 1526, near the end of his life. He was warning citizens of the 16th-century Republic of Florence not to be duped by cunning leaders.

Machiavelli’s most famous book, The Prince, is widely viewed as an instruction manual for tyrants, and it kind of is. But there’s more to Machiavelli than that. He taught rulers how to govern more ruthlessly, yes — but at the same time, he also showed the ruled how they were being led.

He was, in other words, giving both sides the handbook.

Machiavelli also had plenty to say about things that matter today. He wrote about why democracies get sick and die, about the dangers of inequality and partisanship, and even about why appearance and perception matter far more than truth and facts.

Erica Benner, a professor of political philosophy at Yale, writes about all of this in her new book Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli in His World. I spoke to her recently about Machiavelli’s legacy and what he might teach us about Trump and the decline of liberal democracies around the world.

“When you look at societies like America and Britain and various other liberal democracies,” she told me, “you see the kinds of cracks that Machiavelli warned about — and it ought to trouble us.”

Sean Illing - Even by people who’ve never read him, Machiavelli’s known as the great teacher of amorality. Is that reputation earned?

Erica Benner - It’s deserved in the sense that when you read him quickly, especially in translation, it looks like he’s teaching you to be evil, to do whatever it takes to get and keep power, even if that means doing what people think is wrong. But there’s a lot more to him than that. To see it, though, you have to read between the lines and notice all the twists and turns and nuances.

Sean Illing - His most famous book is The Prince. What’s it about and why should people read it today?

Erica Benner - It’s about how ambitious individuals who want to get and hold on to political power can do that. It appears to be an advice book that goes against all the usual advice books for leaders, which tells them to be just and honorable. Machiavelli turns all that upside down and says, “You’ve got to be willing to be ferocious and cold and underhanded if you want to get ahead in a world like ours.”

Sean Illing - But there’s a downside to that kind of ruthlessness, no?

Erica Benner - Absolutely. He’s actually showing how these tactics will get you into trouble if you read this book naively and take it at face value. For the more perceptive, it’s clear that he’s dropping all kinds of hints about why this won’t work in the long run, though it will certainly work in the short term.


Sean Illing - The Prince is also a warning of sorts to citizens. What’s the message?

Erica Benner - He’s trying to show ordinary citizens the ways that ambitious people get to power, and how those people may appear to be solutions to problems but in the end only make things worse. He tells the people, if you indulge a politician who promises to fix everything if only you give up a little more power, you will suffer far more down the line.

Sean Illing - Machiavelli was among the first to popularize this notion that perceptions matter more than reality, that a cunning leader should bend the truth to his or her will. I wonder what he would think of phrases like “post-truth” and “alternative facts.”

Erica Benner - I think he would say, “Nothing new.” This has been going on since humans started doing politics. But he thinks that citizens are responsible more than politicians. Yeah, you can sit there and say, “Look at Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin,” or whoever it might be, and point out how they lie here and there and how that gives them an advantage or allows them to exploit fears. But at the end of the day, it’s up to us, it’s up to citizens, to see through these manipulations.

One thing Machiavelli tries to do is to get citizens to see through the tricks that politicians use to get one over on them and to manipulate them into submission and a more uncritical stance. If he were alive today, I suppose he’d repeat all of these warnings and probably say, “I told you so.”

*Snip*

Sean Illing So what would Machiavelli’s advice to democratic citizens be today?

Erica Benner - Don’t take your institutions for granted. Don’t take your laws for granted. Don’t take order for granted. If you do, you’ll lose your democracy.

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

[dlk]

2. Excellent Article and a Wake-Up Call for All of Us

In politics, there is nothing new under the sun, including despot wannabes like Trump. We, the people, have the responsibility to recognize his intent and not take anything, including our institutions and our republic for granted, or they will be lost. To paraphrase, all evil needs to triumph is for good people to do nothing. We must all act to save our democracy.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Plato said many of the same things 2,000 years earlier...

but we never seem to learn.

"The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by those inferior to yourself." Plato would not be surprised to see little has changed.