Throughout these three most difficult years of our lives, many friends have predicted that there would be justice on the other side. The courts will speak out. Fairness and truth will prevail. The people who have done these deeds—lockdowns, mandatory face coverings, and forced medicines we don’t need and which are often harmful—won’t get away with it.
The people who say these things are said to be bitter and angry. Maybe. But if you listen carefully, what they are is trusting, optimistic, and hopeful. Implied in all the predictions here is a sense that the system works. We still have laws and constitutions and judges who care about justice. The American system is intact and will emerge on top. It broke for a while, to be sure, but it will soon reemerge.
What I’m fearing these days is something more terrifying, namely that the past three years have turned some kind of historical corner. The actions of government, together with media and tech, for those three years have habituated an entire ruling class to the pleasures of ruling by arbitrary diktat, outside of legislation and outside of any accountability whatsoever.
In other words, we seem to have embarked on a major shift from modern (post-Enlightenment) Republican forms of government—of, by, and for the people—toward a more ancient conception of the state.
The ancient idea of the state was rather simple. The primary priority of the conquering gang at the top of the mountain, those occupying the commanding heights, was to keep their power by whatever means, fair and foul. It was always and everywhere a game of thrones. And what does one do with that power? It was to reward friends and punish enemies, to acquire and then distribute loot, treat would-be competitors to power with ruthless brutality, and otherwise work to forestall any change in the power structure.
Some choice quotes from his incredible thinking and writing talent:
• “Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.” • “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.” • “People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.” • “Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.” • “Therefore any cruelty has to be executed at once, so that the less it is tasted, the less it offends; while benefits must be dispensed little by little, so that they will be savored all the more.” • “Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.”
The above thoughts contribute to the use of the term “Machiavellian,” which generally refers to the willingness to deceive for the purpose of acquiring and retaining power. While we like to believe that modern states aren’t governed by that principle, the trouble is that this principle always lies just beneath the surface, ready to dominate when the institutions that protect against it fail.
To be sure, Machiavelli himself gets something of a bad rap, simply because his book was the most eloquent statement of the statist principle expressed during the Renaissance, a time when reading and learning achieved new heights. He wasn’t only a genius but a great writer. However, his principles concerning power aren’t unique to him. He was merely stating what was long practice and codifying it in words that are memorable.
In short, he has been unfairly demonized, in my view. Overlooked too often in his works are his liberal contributions. He warned strongly that a prince over a prosperous and stable realm should never steal the people’s property and never take their guns. Stealing property angers the people in ways they will never forgive, and forbidding guns reveals weakness and fear by the rulers. Instead, they must always seem to be acting in confidence and from the highest ideals, even when it isn’t true.
This was the innovation in the book. One might even see his views as comparatively liberal in the classic sense. He wanted the civilian population left alone, simply because that was what was best for the rulers. The rest was merely telling the brazen and brutal truth about governments that had long been known in human experience. They are inherently exploitative and jealous of power.
The idea of the democratic states that came along 200 years later was to dispense with these darker ideas and instead put control over government in the hands of the people. The people should effectively hire their rulers and subject them to limits that are built into structures. Power should be shared by several institutions—executives, yes, but also courts and legislatures—and these institutions should be pitted against each other to check power.
The theory was that these institutions would protect against the tyranny that Machiavelli coached the prince into exercising, even if it were benevolent. Machiavelli wanted to protect against power loss by stopping rotations in office but democracies (in the sense described by Thomas Paine, for example) were to build rotations into the structure of power in order to stop tyrannies from developing at all.
You could of course call this liberal theory of the state naïve and ultimately failed. Maybe. And yet look at the progress humanity has made since the 18th century! The idea of limits on the state—and the exaltation of fairness, equal treatment under the law, justice, and freedom generally—built civilization as we know it.
By keeping governments from intervening in the private affairs of people and otherwise allowing social evolution to take its own course, the people thrived as never before. Life on earth was transformed. This looks like success to me.
Is that experiment at an end? Not yet. There are still courts of law and some work. There are still good statesmen and they are working for justice. There are still elections, for now, and some might even be patched up enough to mean something and be trusted again.
And yet, there are some very dark clouds on the horizon. I write on the day that the former president is being subjected to a despotic tactic of booking him on felony charges for what are at best accounting errors. But it isn’t just that. The Manhattan attorney general is letting criminals roam the streets with abandon and neglecting the whole city as it seems to be falling to ruin.
And the unequal application of the law is readily apparent in other aspects of U.S. life today. Some mobs are bad and some mobs are good. Some crimes are bad and some crimes are good. Some speech is bad and some is good, and people are being amplified or censored depending on which kind of speech it is. It’s the radical politicization of the entire machinery of state for purposes of giving power to some points of view and taking power away from others.
The modern experiment in a state ruled by power is being reversed in favor of the ancient model. The revolution is far from complete and there is still time to save the ideals of the 18th century and bolster them. But it can’t happen until a vast number of people become aware of what is happening to their once-beloved institutions. For now, the good guys in this struggle are in a small minority but that too is changing.
