Machiavelli's View Of Government

For centuries the standard agreement of any idea of government is that large bodies of people need some type of organized authority to protect their wellbeing. Each successive type of government has inspired harsh debates and defenses about which is best to govern a body of people. The first governments ever developed were theocracies, ruled by a high priest, and these political bodies developed into monarchies, then toward crude democratic systems, wherein certain citizens had the ability to elect a body of leaders. However, as these forms of government have evolved, the idea that they are the center of law has evolved as well. History has come to witness an intense and near constant rotation between forms and functions of government, from …show more content…
Machiavelli’s methods of preservation often times appear to be rather shocking, though all he is attempting to do is maintain a place for his people to live with some sort of contentment. ”It is misleading to describe the thinker Machiavelli as a patriot. He is a patriot of a particular kind: he is more concerned with the salvation of his fatherland than with the salvation of his soul.” (Strauss) Machiavelli is not very concerned with the moral aspects of the decisions being made by his ideal government, so long as the government holds the mask of a moral being, convincing the governed to ignore the man behind the curtain. “Therefore, a prince must not worry about the reproach of cruelty when it is a matter of keeping his subjects united and loyal; for with very few examples of cruelty he will be more compassionate than those who, out of excessive mercy, permit disorders to continue.” (Page 41, Prince) Machiavelli is never going to be described as the most moral human being, though, much like Lao-tzu, he will not allow violence to continue just for the sake of being violent. Machiavelli condones all of the things that he does simply because he wants to ensure that the subjects that are being ruled are loyal to the prince, because without loyalty, there is rebellion, which leads to the disintegration of the …show more content…
The main job of the ideal leader as presented within The Prince is that of the commanding of war, as well as the planning and preparation in times of peace in order to ensure that the state is always ready for any kind of breach of the peace. “A prince, therefore, must not have any other object nor any other thought, nor must he take anything as his profession but war, its institutions, and its discipline...it is evident that when princes have given more thought to personal luxuries than to arms, they have lost their state.” (Page 35, Prince) Machiavelli is considered to be one of the more liberal presentations of the ideal state, brutally honest in his depiction of what it takes to keep people believing in the ruling class, to maintain that loyalty necessary to any successful government. However, though he chooses to present these themes in such a way that they are hard to accept to most, he is not without justification in his conclusions. “Machiavelli is not sadistic; he does not gloat on the need to employ ruthlessness or fraud for creating the kind of society that he admires and recommends. His most savage examples apply only to situations in which the population is thoroughly corrupt and needs violent measures to restore it to health…” (Warburton) In the mind of Machiavelli the thing that keeps his