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Spencer Carpenter

Section 6

4-29-16

 Is It Better To Be Feared Than Loved Cont.

Like Niccolo Machiavelli said, It is better to be feared then loved as a leader, and the great Frank Underwood stating if your not hunting your being hunted, this all comes back to a mentality as a leader that you must gain power by doing whatever you see fit. Niccolo was great at doing whatever it took to stay in power and thus earning him the title of founder of modern political science and how the business is carried out, of course it is different today then when he was calling the shots although the public may never truly know what goes on behind the door of our government.

This brings to question how dirty the political game really is, if its anything like HBO’s series House of Cards then the public must be really blind to what’s going on. I am more concerned with should the government officials be like Machiavelli or should they play the card safe and avoid conflict. My personal opinion is there is a time and place for everything, and if you wont do it someone else is standing right behind you that is more then willing to. I think much of the political game today is about whom you know and how much money you can get and when you have money you have power. However on the contrary to this thought is what happens when to much power goes to an individual and you end up with a situation like Hitler.

Machiavelli made some valid points and I do believe if you don’t have a leader that is willing to do some dirty work to get things done then your never going to get any results from them. Yes I know this sounds horrible, but we don’t live in a perfect world where if you stand in line and just wait your turn your going to get what you want, you never know they may run out. This being said when it comes to a leader they need to know when to be aggressive and take action and need to know when to lay low, take the Cuba missile crisis for example, if JFK wouldn’t have been calling the shots we may have had a full on war. Machiavelli was aggressive for his time and that’s when you could be a feared leader and rule with an iron first but as history has shown the leader will never last, and for the ones who are to nice, well we didn’t hear much from them because they got taken over.

I enjoy reading Machiavelli’s work because he was someone who didn’t play by the rules and did what it took for him to be in power, not always the best move but sometimes you have to stand up and take what is yours or in his case what he wanted to be his. Though his theories were a bit over the top he did what it took to get where he wanted, I believe that the political game is just as competitive now and even though we don’t see it many politicians are more similar to Machiavelli then we think.