Word: machiavelli
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...doesn't take much to turn a first year Socrates into a senior Machiavelli. The first push along that road comes when bright young Veritas-seekers gets their first assignment back with grades that say "Surprise! You're a complete idiot...
...prince, wrote Machiavelli, must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. Therefore, a prudent ruler ought not to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interest, and when the reasons that made him bind himself no longer exist...
THESE WORDS ARE FROM THE EPIGRAPH OF ROOSEVELT: THE LION AND THE FOX, a book that Bill Clinton has spoken of fondly as his appreciation of F.D.R.'s style of governance has grown. The President has already proved adept at following the dark side of Machiavelli's injunction: during the campaign, he ignored the & exploding deficit because acknowledging its growth would have meant breaking his promise of tax relief for the middle class. It is tempting to mock him now that he has broken that pledge, but Clinton has at least faced the facts squarely, which is more than...
...Romania, for example, that he decided to embark Zaire on its now stalled "transition to democracy." After breakfast he accords audiences that can stretch into the afternoon; then he relaxes with % his family or studies biographies of men he admires, including Napoleon and De Gaulle. Mobutu is fascinated by Machiavelli, whose treatise The Prince he used to keep at his bedside...
...Discourses to Livy, Machiavelli points out that he lives in a secular, not a pious world. Machiavelli's observation still holds true today. But if the rights of the pious can be overturned at anyone's whim, the goal of increasing moral consciousness seems less attainable than ever...