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Lilly

That is not pure Machiavelli, that is a misinterpretation of Machiavelli. That they read Machiavelli is not evidence of their flaws, which is what the video suggests.
(And to my knowledge, Machavelli never lopped of an innocent woman's head to make a point about the effectiveness of terror on your own people. But praise be Sun Tsu!)

I don't need the internet to read The Prince; my copy is on my bookshelf across the room.

"Machiavelli's name does not rank in the noble company of scientists. in the common opinion of men, his name itself has become a term of reproach and dishonor...
"Why should this be? If our reference is to the views that Machiavelli in fact held, that he stated plainly, openly and clearly in his writings, there is in the common opinion no truth at all... it is true that he taught tyrants, from his own days - Thomas Cromwell, for example, the lowborn Chancellor whom Henry VIII brought in to replace Thomas More when More refused to make his conscience a tool of his majesty's interests, was said to have a copy of Machiavelli always in his pocket; and in our time Mussolini wrote a college thesis on Machiavelli. But knowledge has a disturbing neutrality in this respect. We do not blame the research analyst who has solved the chemical mysteries of a poison because a murderer made use of his treatise...
"We are, I think, and not only from the fate of Machiavelli's reputation, forced to conclude that men do not really want to know about themselves... Perhaps the full disclosure of what we are and how we act is too violent a medicine.
"In any case, whatever may be the desires of most men, it is most certainly against the interests of the powerful that the truth should be known about political behavior. if the political truths stated by Machiavelli were widely known, the success of tyranny would become much less likely. If men understood as much of the mechanism of rule and privilege as Machiavelli understood, they would no longer be deceived int accepting that rule and privilege, and they would know what steps to take to overcome them.
"Therefore the powerful and their spokesmen - all the 'official' thinkers, the lawyers, and philosophers and preachers and demagogues - must defame Machiavelli. Machiavelli says that rulers lie and break faith; this proves, they say, that he libels human nature. Machiavelli says that ambitious men struggle for power; he is apologizing for the opposition, the enemy, and trying to confuse you about us, who wish to lead you for your own good and welfare. Machiavelli says that you must keep strict watch over officials and subordinate them to the law; he is encouraging subversion and the loss of national unity. Machavelli says that no man with power is to be trusted; you see that his aim is to smash all your faith and ideals.
"Small wonder that the powerful - in public - denounce Machiavelli. The powerful have a long practice in sizing up their opposition. They can recognize an enemy who will never compromise, even when that enemy is so abstract as a body of ideas"
-James Burnham "The Machiavellians"

"Where neither their property nor their honor is touched, most men live content." - M (a lesson liberals never knew, and pseudocons (aka neocons) have forgotten.

"Gold may not get you good soldiers, but good soldiers can always get you gold." - M
"Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised." -M (on the VTech massacre)
"Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great" - M (on victory in the Iraqi theatre of the War on Terror)
"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." - M (on democracy in Iraq)

And my favorite:

"God is unwilling to do everything, and thereby take from us our free will, and that share of glory that belongs to us." - M

To understand and accept this is to join the ranks of Men.