In the September 26 issue of the online American Greatness website, former Trump presidential advisor Michael Anton poses the question of “ What Does Fidelity to Our Founding Principles Require Today?” Anton answers that “revolution” is the only response to the current Leftist tyranny running the country but is squelched by the long-standing conservative virtue norms of “passivity, the turning the other cheek, bending one’s knees and enduring beatings…forever” as political virtues. Anton cites the demonized 16th century political thinker Niccolo Machiavelli as the rationale for such revolution:
Anton: “For there is no recourse to a higher principle of law, then there is no other choice. To borrow from Machiavelli, the ‘effectual truth’ of conservative pusillanimity (timidity) about the right of revolution is perpetual self-subjugation to tyranny. (Machiavelli’s) “weasels, compromisers, mediocrities, and losers”.
What Anton omits is any discussion of the current ongoing, world-wide class war as the basis of such tyranny and what Machiavelli had to say about such economic class “tumults.” For the class conflict in the city-state of Florence, Italy in the 1500’s was not that much different than todays. But Machiavelli had a much different way to overcome class conflict than merely tyranny on one hand and revolution on the other: deception. However, Anton curiously doesn’t even touch on another option to resolving class conflict, even though he is known as a Machiavelli scholar bar none. But Anton’s mentor to Machiavelli was Leo Strauss of the so-called conservative Claremont Institute, who, in pseudo-Machiavellian fashion, wrongly made Machiavelli out as irreligious and a teacher of wickedness.
The ruling class in Florence in the 1500’s were the business merchants who opposed the super-rich Ottimati (Optimates: Medici’s, Borgia’s) who opposed the Popolo (the People). We need to be reminded that the Popolo finally did take up arms against the oligarchs during the decline of the Roman Empire (the Barbarians, Huns and Vandals). As in Florence, the current tyrants don’t even give off a Machiavellian perceptual appearance of virtuousness, to wit President Biden and his Attorney General who deploys the FBI to intimidate and ridicule opponents. Class hatred by such tyrannical rulers engenders solidarity in one’s own social class but eventual ruination of the state along with its tyrannical rulers.
One of the purposes of Machiavelli writing his infamous book The Prince was not to teach evil, as both current conservative intellectuals and liberal movie makers and novelists believe, but how leaders could use the virtues of the people to achieve and maintain their leadership of the state during external wars or contentious internal conflicts. Machiavelli asserted that both classes lack the type of virtue necessary given the situation at hand in such class conflicts.
Anton accurately points out for example that the political virtues extolled by the People are passivity even in the face of near state-manufactured genocide and tyrannical leaders abandoning even the appearance of virtuousness toward the people. As in 16th century Florence, current-day leaders of both classes, to use a modern term, are “virtue signaling”. But each class champions the wrong virtues even for their own self-interest, let alone the endurance of the state. This explains why Machiavelli championed an absence of morality and embracing a pure consequential approach, for which he was wrongly dubbed as amoral, evil and “Machiavellian”.
Machiavelli: “Therefore, it is necessary for a Prince, if he wants to preserve himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it as necessity dictates” (Chapter XV, The Prince).
Virtuosity cannot be expected from the masses and conversely cannot be maintained by tyrannical leaders. To this, Anton would probably agree as it is the thesis of his article. But is there is a place for deceptive and hypocritical practices between tyranny and revolution? Current day American conservative leaders lambast “lying”, even when such might lead to a better outcome for all (see Rod Dreher, Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents, 2020). Machiavelli might say if the deception option is not taken, a leader will lose his legitimacy and the state will lose its sovereignty. This “Machiavellian” consequentialist stance is in striking contrast to classical political thinking, such as that of the American founders, embraced by Anton. Lest I be misunderstood, I am not saying, however, that Biden doesn’t lie enough. What I am saying is that hypocrisy and deception can sometimes work where force or honesty doesn’t (see Ruth W. Grant, Hypocrisy and Integrity, 1997).
Machiavelli even wrote a play titled Mandragola (from mandrake root, a poison) where a wealthy old husband with a beautiful young wife, cannot bear a child. A middleman posing as a doctor arranges for a gigolo to sleep with the beautiful wife under a ruse and a child is conceived to the delight of all, irrespective of the immorality involved. The point of Machiavelli’s play was not to champion immorality, but that there are circumstances that necessitate deception if one is to survive or perpetuate. As Raymond Angelo Bellioti points out in his book Machiavelli’s Secret: The Soul of the Statesman, Machiavelli never wrote the ends justify the means. Rather, the ends might justify the means but only in an existential emergency. In normal situations he advocated conventional religious norms should prevail.
The Elites fail to see that a lack of virtue by rulers can be excused only if the state survives with a stable Middle Class. The presenting problem with the Leftist Obama-run shadow government of Biden, is that the current tyranny obviously wants the state to fail. Biden keeps trying to make the Working and Independent Class into second class citizens who have no Constitutional protections and can be criminalized, legitimately medically murdered without consent, raped and murdered, or incarcerated with torturous physical punishment for exercising their right to protest, all with impunity. This is why Machiavelli said that rule by Fear (or tyranny) alone without legitimate deception is not likely to work.
The deceptive Obama shadow government is provoking civil war because it wants to destroy the sovereignty and legitimacy of the state. So, deception without seeking good consequences for the People, is likely to fail. There is no guarantee that deception itself, however, will succeed without a virtuous leader willing to sacrifice himself for the nation, as advocated by Machiavelli.
Yes, revolution and civil war appears to be the only viable option, but can the deceptive tyrannical shadow ruler of Obama and his hand-picked White House staff surrounding a president pretending to be senile, be overcome by means short of revolution? Maybe, but conservatives first need to see through the deception and media cover to overcome their passivity and realize the sovereignty and legitimacy of the state is imperiled.
Perhaps Michael Lind in his book The New Class War (2020) describes what is at stake:
“Managerial elites are destined to dominate the economy and society of every modern nation. But if they are not checked, they will overreach and produce a destructive populist backlash in proportion to their excess. If there is not to be a perpetual conflict among the two permanent classes of technological society, the new class war must come to an end in one of two ways…cross class compromise or the triumph of one class over the other.
Given the weakness and disorganization of national working classes…the most likely possibility is that today’s class war will come to an end…when the managerial minority, with its near monopoly of wealth, political power, expertise, media influence, and academic authority, completely and successfully represses the numerically greater but politically weaker working-class majority. If that should occur, the future North America and Europe may look a lot like Brazil and Mexico, with nepotistic oligarchies clustered in a few swollen metropolitan areas surrounded by hinterlands that are derelict, depopulated and despised.
Only power can check power. Only a major reasserting of the political power, economic leverage and cultural influence of national wage-wage earning majorities of all races, ethnicities, and creeds can stop the degeneration of the US and other western democracies into high tech banana republics….reformers will need to rebuild old institutions or build new ones that can integrate working-class citizens of all origins into decision-making in government, the economy, and the culture, so that everyone can be an insider. The alternative is grim: a future of gated communities and mobs led by demagogues at their gates”.
It goes without saying, that any such institutional reforms must be real and not undertaken deceptively (e.g., Georgia Meloni and the Brothers of Italy) or by controlled opposition infiltrators. Elites are entrenched and reluctant to share their technological power. The only thing that might motivate them is fear, not love (Machiavelli). They are afraid of the subjugated and by more virtuous rival religious countries such as Russia. Conversely, popular demonstrations seldom work and continued tyranny is bound to fail in many Red states. Fear of revolution that can’t be stolen by the elites by fraud or money and fear of defeat in war are the only apparent options at hand. So, Anton is right about revolution, but his rationale is too intellectualized to galvanize and legitimatize the Working Class to carry it out and is perhaps informed by the wrongheaded demonization of the only political thinker who might offer guidance out of the current world-wide class conflict.
Wayne Lusvardi lives in Sun City, Arizona (waynelus@yahoo.com). The opinions expressed above are solely his and do not reflect those of this website or any political party.