Anti-Democratic Thought

It is a terrible error to assume that the standards one applies to oneself can and should be universally extrapolated in all areas of life. While I certainly do believe that there are basic moral standards that can be applied globally, I don't think the same standards for measuring a person's morality should be used to measure, say, the profitability of a business, or the effectiveness of a type of pencil.

Anti-Democratic ThoughtEdited by Erich Kofmel, This Book Starts a Daring Academic Debate!www.amazon.com/1845401247Political Science OnlineFull-text political science books, articles, journals at Questia.www.Questia.com/Political_ScienceMasters in Int'l AffairsSam Nunn School of Int'l Affairs Georgia Inst. of Technologywww.inta.gatech.eduBecause government is, by nature, an intrinsically coercive force, and one which is compelled to use that coercive force for the general common good, rather than specific and individual good, we must apply slightly different standards to it. For this reason, it is unfair to say that Machiavelli espouses an intrinsically immoral system. If one were to apply Machiavelli to one's personal life then, yes, it would be immoral. But the morality of coercive, collective systems is substantively different than that of individual, voluntary systems. A government has a responsibility to ensure that the good citizens are not preyed upon by criminals. It must assess the best way of doing that within moderate bounds of reason.

Machiavelli's primary systemic flaw is not in the theory itself that he teaches and applies, but rather in the bounds of that theory. He does not recognize scale. A peaceful protest in the street may, in some strange hypothetical circumstance, require quelling. However, Machiavelli's theory can be used to advocate the use of real bullets in such an action, rather than tear gas or rubber bullets. Therein lies the primary flaw of Machiavelli's work: a flaw in proportion, and a flaw understandable for his time. In...