Iraq under the reign of Machiavelli's Prince and Socrates' Golden Guardian
"Insurgent groups in Iraq warn that democracy could lead to passing un-Islamic laws, such as permitting homosexual marriage, if the majority of people agreed to it. 'Democracy is a Greek work meaning the rule of the people, which means that the people do what they see fit. This concept is considered apostasy (abandoning what one believed in) and defies the belief in one God-Muslim's doctrine." (San Francisco Chronicle, 31 December 2004, A3).
Machiavelli's advice regarding the conflict between the Iraqi insurgents and President Bush would be explicit, regarding the governance of Iraq -- do not leave governance up to the democratic will of the people, for this will only stimulate chaos and revolt and allow minority clerics to stimulate discontent amongst fundamentalist sympathizers in Iraq. Instead, install a New, pragmatically governing Prince who will neither rule by majority rule, passing apostate laws to discomfort the populace, but who will not be unduly influenced by the political desires of clerics to dominate the government. (A heredity prince would be impossible in this situation, given that Iraq does not have an extant royal monarchy.)
Machiavelli would see a democratically elected, Constitutional Prince as anathema and unwise in this situation. In Chapter V of The Prince, he specifically denotes what should be done concerning the governance of "those states which have been acquired," as Iraq has, through warfare and occupation. For states unlike Iraq, that "have been accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom," such states should be allowed to remain free and constitutionally governed. "Because such a government, being created...
" Parallels with business takeovers are frighteningly stark. Change. In the Prince he says "It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things" (Machiavelli). Relevancy...and Not The impact of Machiavelli's writing on politics has been accepted for some time, but the relevance of his ideas to business had to wait until
morality of the George Bush administration. The writer looks at classic texts to garner a sense of what political morality should be about and then holds the administration of Bush against the measurement to illustrate the lack of morality and the fact that it failed to promote the happiness of the United States people. In addition, the author explores the negative impact that was felt by other nations under
A Critique of Democracy: the Latin American Left Introduction The Latin American Left was mainly inspired by the idealism of Marx. Marx (1873) believed that “the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind and translated into forms of thought.” For the Left, the main problem has always been rooted in class—as materialism is the basis of their worldview, class and class struggle was the biggest issue,
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