March 15, 2024
And the parable of the toad and the harrow
To the Magnificent Colonel, of whom I honor and give glory:
Before you read this letter, I must first dispel the vicious collective hypnotic spell cast over my reputation for centuries, popularized by modern liberal movies, novels, academia, and even by American Catholic and Judeo-Christian biblical religion, meant to twist what I wrote in 1532, that my book The Prince teaches only how to be evil. This is more than a reading comprehension problem and reflects the manipulativeness of so-called Machiavellianism that I am accused of.
I refer you to my sermon "On Penitence" (delivered to the religious Company of Piety and Pope Clement VII in 1532, on how a prince needs to do inconspicuous penance for deeds necessary to save his nation); and on three prose-poems:
"On Ambition" (lawyer Cicero could never secure the Republic against the ambitions of the oligarchs),
"On Ingratitude or Envy" (of the Citizens and Mercenary armies and proxy wars) and
"On Fortune" (of a nation and how it was ruined by fraud and the circumvention of usury laws by the Medici's).
Together with my book The Prince, these describe a world not unlike your modern situation where:
* oligarch families tyrannically control the world and drive perpetual warfare against other competing banking monopolies and governments (The Medici Family, Popes and Medici Bank),
* where proxy wars are conducted by mercenaries and contractors,
* where fraud, usury and gambling is institutionalized as normal and moral banking (like your hedge funds and mortgages),
* and conspiracies and coups abound disguised as plagues. Even in my time plagues and fire-bombing could be weaponized by destroying food stocks of animal meat, grains, and crops, by planning to divert water from the Arno River to starve the enemy city of Pisa, by crowding people together, and by urban fires, such as the burning of Rome.
Only believe what I wrote not what others viciously rumor about me using cherry-picked out of context one-line quotes. Leo Strauss slanders me as a teacher of evil and irreligious apparently to keep the public reading what he and others wrongly say about me. In his book Machiavelli's Secret: The Soul of the Statesman", scholar Angelo Belliotti retorts:"Machiavelli never calls anything other than evil". Why do they try so hard to divert others away from understanding my writings?
My approach to politics cannot be summed up in pithy cliches like"it is always better to be feared than loved"when the best is to be both loved and feared, but they rarely come together as love can be exploited and returned with hate and assassination or poisoning. If a person in a position of authority must choose, he will find that love alone only spoils the populace, but fear-only does not. My statement"men must either be caressed or extinguished"refers only to when a conqueror takes over an adversary's country. Echoing Christ's golden rule, I wrote"whatever we do to another must be such that we do not fear his retaliation".
Unlike the forged Sermon on the Mount inserted into the imitation Gospel of Matthew, we could not live very long if we lived by the unrealistic Beatitudes and"the first shall be last and the last first", a policy now ruinously being played out in your nation. But, sadly, with support for a useless false gospel from biblical Christians who no doubt opposes the actions to let others overrun our country, we end up with minds that have no qualm with our inaction to stop it. State governors could stop it tomorrow if they were pressured to declare an emergency the same as the renegade Blue States did over an epidemic that was initially no more than the self-clearing flu but now has morphed into a real health crisis (see" Should Red State Governors Declare an Anti-Coup Counter Emergency?").
My writings bestow"glory"on a hierarchy of leaders, with religious leaders at the top:
* Religious leaders who found new religions that make a new public and moral order and republic (Romulus, Christ, Paul, Marcion, St. Ignatius),
* Those who reform corrupted religion (Luther, Erasmus, Marcion)
* Military leaders who, when necessary, can be ruthless (Caesar, Severus who dissolved the Praetorian Guard and created a citizen army, Agathocles who killed all the oligarchs),
* Political leaders who hold up the interests of the Populares common people (Soderini),
* Those who write literature and produce art which elevates the citizenry (Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dante Alighieri, Juvenal),
* And those who serve the nation by virtue of their occupation or patronage (such as my patron Lorenzo di Filippo, who influenced the Medici bankers to release me from imprisonment and torture and restored me as a writer but could not restore my former position as an ambassador and advisor).
However, in my time I refused to confer glory on religious leaders like the Florentine ruler-priest Savonarola, the populist who piously condemned sodomy (think HIV AIDS a non-viral disease) but was an"unarmed prophet"who let the French conquer Florence without any resistance, leaving it to being overrun by confiscation, rape, and subjugation. Sound familiar?
Especially, don't believe what Christians like Catholic Benjamin Wiker wrote in his"10 Books That Screwed Up the World", which slanders me as"one of the most profound teachers of evil the world has ever known". Wiker apparently never read my book The Discourses wherein I wrote:"one cannot do evil under the cover of good".
Russia learned its lesson from Bolshevik rule and has returned to orthodox Christianity and has its sovereignty and your nation does not. Even Stalin purged Russia of Bolsheviks by putting them in Gulags. Sure, Stalin sent the Christian Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the Gulag for criticizing him in a letter, but was Stalin right in purging his nation of Bolshevik's? Stalin also purged doctors as part of"The Doctor's Plot"due to the breakout of a plague in Moscow (see Stalin and Medicine: Untold Stories by Natalya Rapoport, 2020). As Napoleon warned, history cannot be relied on as it is just a set of agreed upon lies, just as the history of the wars of your country are.
It is a vicious distortion that I said:"the ends justify the means"- without adding"but only in genuine emergencies where the very existence of the state and religion is threatened by war, corruption, insurrection and coups, invasion by migration, or foreign domination"; and, moreover,"in all other non-emergent situations public morality ought to default to conventional Christian morality". Failure to resist during such crucial situations invites servility and slavery.
Enough of having to justify by what moral or patriotic authority I write this letter to you. By now, you can get a feel of where this letter is going, as I wonder whether the goals of OCOC and OCYC are realistic, what constitutes its member base, and whether it has enough civic virtue to do what appears bad to save the Republic if necessary?
I won't go into a long diatribe on questioning how realistic are the counter policies you propose to President Biden's State of the Union address, as"Albemarle Man"has done an able job in his"Mac Does STOTU"-see here.
I wonder if OCOC has the"virtue"to get one's hands dirty if necessary to save the republic, as it has claimed a moral high ground invoking self-righteous Christian morality that subscribes to loving those very forces of evil it wants to displace. For example, if ultimately necessary, would OCOC stuff ballot boxes just as our adversaries do, to save the republic? We will be judged by the consequences of our actions. Now you might get what I mean that sometimes a leader must sometimes do bad to do good?
Thus far, OCOC's membership appeal has apparently been directed to the Evangelical Christian camp, despite its continued support for more war in Ukraine that runs against the grain of the much of the rest of the country. OCOC should try and widen its member base with Orthodox Christian, Catholic, and perhaps even Muslim leaders if it is trying to amass a voting bloc.
I leave you with a proverb: "The harrow is a construction of square wood that has certain teeth, and our farmers drag it over plowed land to break up clods, remove weeds and to cover up seeds. And one day when the farmer was leveling his field, a toad that was not used to seeing such great labor popped up out of its rabbit hole. While she peaked to see what was up there, she was run over by the harrow, which scratched her back and her paws twice. As the harrow passed over her a second time hitting the toad hard, she screamed to the farmer "Don't Come Back!' This word gave rise to the proverb"if what you plant in life backfires and invites retribution, no matter what you intended, then don't repeat it". This is all I have found of value, and if you have any uncertainty about it let me know" (excerpted from letter to Francesco Guicciardini, from some words in Machiavelli's comedy The Mandrake Root). Moral: Without awareness we blindly go our way without recognizing unintended consequences of the rabbits vengefully ruining one's crop. And how long will we continue to be run over and only return it with unrequited love?
Salutation: "An existing ruler has a good reputation where humanity, loyalty, and religion have for a long time been common. Yet where cruelty, treachery, and irreligion have dominated for a time it is often because, as bitter things disturb the taste and sweet ones cloy it, so men get bored with good and complain of ill. Cruelty, treachery and irreligion opened-up Italy to Hannibal's invasion and also opened up Spain to Roman general Scipio's attack. Thus, both found times and things suited to their way of proceeding. At that very time a man like Scipio would not have been so successful in Italy, or one like Hannibal so successful in Spain, if they both were in the provinces of their home countries." (excerpted from Letter to Piero Soderini, former ruler, driven from Florence by the Medici). How successful will your counter proposals be when your leaders are full of cruelty, treachery, and irreligion at home? Will your seeds fall on barren ground?
Ambassador of the Florentine State to the Minor Friars and the Court of Cesar, Your Servant, historian, comic and tragic writer,