Who Was Niccolò Machiavelli?

Niccolo Machiavelli did something that electrified the planet and enraged the Power Elite. He gave away the secrets of getting and keeping State Power. The Prince is his magnum opus detailing how to 'look honest' while doing the wrong thing. If this keeps The Prince in power, then the ends justifies the means. Your Overlords read this in their Elite Private School - it's still on the reading list. It was taken off your school's reading list in 1922 (or thereabouts).


There are a few works of literature that should be on the reading list of every school in the country.  The Prince is one of them.  Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes, another treatise on how to deal with the masses, is another.  Many of these books are difficult to read, but the treasure trove of information they contain is first rate.  By dumbing down the American population, The Powers That Be don't have to worry about two things.  They don't have to ever worry about one of the Herd getting his or her hands on the book, and if they do, the Mass Man or Mass Woman has no chance of understanding it.  Look at the ads and the articles in magazines like the American Mercury or the Saturday Evening Post from the early 1900's to see what I'm talking about.  Compulsory schooling has taken the literate American libertarian system and turned it into a tool for creating ignorance. 


Today's political system, and the reactions to it by the people has proven Machiavelli correct on all counts.  Politicians of all stripes promise the moon, and the people on the side of that guy weep and snivel and bow and scrape before their Honorable Leader.  Then the guy on the other Team does the same thing and his team genuflects and tears up at every speech and stare and gape in wonder at such 'leadership' and 'growth'.  It is a sight to behold.


From the Rothbard article: "The prince, he writes, must be willing to become "a great liar and deceiver," taking advantage of all the credulous: for "men are so simple" that "the deceiver will always find someone ready to be deceived." Or, in the immortal words of P.T. Barnum centuries later, "There's a sucker born every minute." And again, in praising fraud and deceit, Machiavelli writes that "contemporary experience shows that princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their word lightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, have overcome those abiding by honest principles." Or, in the words of another astute American social critic: "nice guys finish last."
As one might say - "simply Machiavellian".


Recommended reading "Who Was Niccolò Machiavelli?" by Murray Rothbard.  
Read Below by Jeff Riggenbach.