Interesting.
Will Durant on Machiavelli
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
I’m kinda amused that they were startled about strongly religious folks finding a dishonest priest being mocked for promoting objectively bad stuff is shocking; it sounds kinda like Dogma’s humor. (Obscene to the extreme, and profane, but that could only have been made by someone familiar with actual Catholic teachings…if only for the insults used.)
thinking on mention that there’s no mention of his wife
It’s hard to figure, across cultures, but… if somebody acted like that, being a highly effective hipster, I’d be shocked if he did say anything that touched on something he truly cared about. Caring is a vulnerability.
Excellent. Machiavelli lives today as he has always lived in all history. He articulated and codified how states and corporations grasp power and maintain it the real world. Simply put, Machiavelli statecraft and Mafia criminal methods of governing and maintaining power go hand in hand. Both do all possible to strengthen and protect their “families” .
From a Machiavellian perspective the Church plays an ancillary but important role. Christianity appeals to governments in that it conveys a Godlike status to the ruler who is not a true believer while those he rules do believe thus creating the addition of moral law to civic law in order to strengthen the hold on the populace.
The problem comes,as we see now in the world, when the citizen now longer believe in a Christian or fixed moral law, thus becoming lax and weak, and able or interested in defending their own country. We see this now in America unhinged from its formal moral beliefs. And, IMO, the state must create, substitute and enforce its own secular morality such as belief in climate change, diversity, bodily health, etc. And so forth and so on.