The Auron MacIntyre Show - Machiavelli on Governing the Conquered ｜ 2⧸18⧸26

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00:00:30.000 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:32.000 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:34.000 I am Oren McIntyre.

00:00:36.000 The breaking news right now is that it seems like

00:00:39.000 pretty much everything that floats or flies

00:00:41.000 in the US military is heading towards the Middle East.

00:00:45.000 This is after Benjamin Netanyahu was in the White House

00:00:49.000 just a few weeks ago.

00:00:51.000 And we've heard increasing talk about the need for war with Iran.

00:00:56.000 We were told, of course, this wouldn't happen. 0.99

00:00:58.000 Don't be ridiculous. 0.98

00:00:59.000 Of course, we're not going to go to war with Iran. 0.99

00:01:02.000 But, you know, it looks like we might.

00:01:05.000 Look, I could sit here and speculate.

00:01:07.000 I can lay it all out for you.

00:01:08.000 I mean, Israel has literally already told the IDF

00:01:11.000 to prepare for war in case there's some kind of retaliation

00:01:15.000 from a theoretical strike on Iran by the United States.

00:01:19.000 But I just don't know what's happening right now.

00:01:21.000 And anybody who tells you they do know exactly what's happening now

00:01:24.000 what's happening now is probably just kind of, you know, making up as they go.

00:01:28.000 I'm not looking at the situation with a lot of enthusiasm,

00:01:33.000 but I'm not going to sit here and speculate about everything either.

00:01:36.000 So instead of trying to cobble together the possible situation,

00:01:41.000 I think it would just be better for us to continue with our series on Machiavelli,

00:01:45.000 because the nice thing is that we're going to be talking about how Machiavelli feels about conquest,

00:01:50.000 ruling people.

00:01:51.000 Can you just bomb a country and walk away?

00:01:53.000 Will that actually work?

00:01:54.000 Will you hold the country?

00:01:56.000 I bet you already know the answer to that question.

00:01:58.000 But we're going to have Machiavelli make it clear as to why that might not be the case.

00:02:02.000 We're also going to talk about why it's important for you to be a singular sovereign

00:02:06.000 who controls your own arms and not split them among others.

00:02:09.000 Again, very valuable information this moment.

00:02:12.000 So in a way, by continuing with our series on Machiavelli,

00:02:15.000 we'll actually be addressing the news because that's the nice thing about properly understood politics.

00:02:20.000 It tends to be applicable across pretty much all instances of politics.

00:02:26.000 By learning the basics, learning the truths, learning the frame,

00:02:30.000 we can fill in what is happening in our current day without getting hysterical about any given headline or event.

00:02:37.000 So that said, let's jump back in to Machiavelli's The Prince.

00:02:41.000 Now, remember, we are currently in chapter three of The Prince.

00:02:45.000 It is a book that is very short.

00:02:47.000 The chapters are very short.

00:02:48.000 You can fly through them very quickly.

00:02:50.000 We got the vast majority of the way through chapter three.

00:02:54.000 But this is the end here is a nice little summation of Machiavelli's points on conquest

00:03:00.000 and turns out, again, to be very relevant to what might be happening right now.

00:03:04.000 So we'll go ahead and jump in there.

00:03:10.000 All right.

00:03:11.000 All right.

00:03:12.000 So Machiavelli says, so Louis, and remember in this moment, he's talking about the king of France and his attempts to conquer in Italy and why they ultimately failed.

00:03:20.000 He says, so Louis eliminated the minor powers, increased the strength of Italy's greatest powers or greater powers, brought in a foreign power, didn't settle in the country and didn't establish colonies.

00:03:36.000 So these are errors that he's saying that Louis did not follow.

00:03:41.000 He didn't follow Machiavelli's rules for what you should do in a scenario when you're trying to conquer a foreign nation.

00:03:47.000 He says, first, he eliminated the minor powers, which are the ones that you could already control, the ones that you didn't need to worry about.

00:03:56.000 He wiped those out anyway.

00:03:57.000 So now there's no competition in the lower stratosphere, only competition in the great power layer.

00:04:04.000 Then he increased the strength of one Italy's greater powers.

00:04:08.000 So not only did he get rid of the minor powers that might have competed against the other major powers, he increased the power of Italy's other greater powers.

00:04:17.000 So he's eliminating any of the guys that might have allied with him against those greater powers while bolstering the position of the powers that are already there.

00:04:26.000 Then he brought in foreign powers. 0.97

00:04:28.000 Then he brought in foreign powers. 0.97

00:04:29.000 Remember, in the last episode, we talked about how he was impatient in taking land.

00:04:34.000 He had believed it was the kingdom of Naples he wanted to get to.

00:04:37.000 So he invited the Spanish in to help split the duty with him. 0.97

00:04:41.000 So not only did he get rid of the minor competing powers, he increased the strength of the existing powers.

00:04:47.000 And he brought in other great powers who were not already in the conflict, making sure that there could be additional additional people pushing back.

00:04:55.000 Pushing back against his will.

00:04:57.000 He didn't settle in the in the country.

00:04:59.000 So he didn't make his personal presence known.

00:05:01.000 He didn't put exert enough control over the area and he didn't establish colonies.

00:05:06.000 Again, he didn't bring the level of control he needed in this foreign area.

00:05:11.000 So all major mistakes he made as he was trying to conquer.

00:05:16.000 But these heirs wouldn't have done him any harm during his lifetime if he didn't also deprive the Venetians of their power and if he hadn't strengthened the church or brought Spain into Italy.

00:05:27.000 It would have been reasonable, even necessary to humble the Venetians.

00:05:31.000 But given that he did take those two other steps, he ought to never have consented to pulling down the Venetians.

00:05:38.000 As long as the Venetians remained militarily strong, they would have protected Lombardy from attacks from the outside and they would have permitted such an attack. 0.87

00:05:46.000 Or they would have never permitted such an attack unless it led to their getting more territory and no state would want to take any part of Lombardy from France in order to give it to the Venetians.

00:05:57.000 Nor would any state have had the courage to tackle both Venice and France together.

00:06:02.000 So basically, by going out of his way to humble these people, he basically drove off what could have been a valuable ally in that moment.

00:06:11.000 If anyone objects, King Louis let the Pope have Romania and let Spain have half of the Kingdom of Naples to avoid war.

00:06:19.000 I repeat what I have already said, namely that you should never let yourself be driven off course by your desire to avoid war, because in such a case, you won't avoid it, but you will merely postpone your disadvantage.

00:06:33.000 So once again, as he did previously, he warns that if war becomes necessary, just do it.

00:06:40.000 Don't sit around and perhaps people will take that the other direction when it comes to Donald Trump. Right.

00:06:45.000 Looking at maybe war in Iran is necessary and perhaps delaying it is simply foolish. 0.64

00:06:51.000 I'll let you decide that. But these are the this is the advice that ultimately Machiavelli is giving to the ruler.

00:06:58.000 So King Louis lost Lombardy through not doing any of the things that others may have done when taking possession of the country and wanting to keep them.

00:07:07.000 There's nothing weird or mysterious about this. It is all very reasonable and natural.

00:07:12.000 During a conversation about these matters that I had in Nantes with the Cardinal of Rowan, he remarked that the Italians don't understand war.

00:07:22.000 And I replied that the French don't understand politics because if they did, they wouldn't have allowed the church to become so powerful.

00:07:29.000 And so it turned out France caused the church and Spain to be great powers in Italy, which then led to France's downfall.

00:07:37.000 We can we can get from this a general rule, which which never or hardly ever fails.

00:07:44.000 Namely, someone who causes someone else to become powerful brings about his own ruin because it takes skill or power to do that.

00:07:53.000 And these attributes will be seen as threatening by the one who has benefited from them.

00:07:58.000 So he says, look, never, never go out of your way.

00:08:03.000 To make another person strong, to make another country strong, because that person will look at you and realize, oh, no, you have skill.

00:08:13.000 You have these things that are threatening to me.

00:08:16.000 Even though I've benefited from them.

00:08:18.000 So they're never going to look at you and say, I'm so grateful.

00:08:21.000 And now that this guy has just won me this territory, I'm going to be so happy.

00:08:25.000 No, they're immediately going to look at you as a competitor.

00:08:27.000 Oh, if they can do this to the country that I wanted them to do it to, they can do it to me as well.

00:08:33.000 And so ultimately I have to be very worried about empowering these people in a country where I'm moving in because they might then eventually turn on me because they see me as a threat because I am the one ultimately with the skill.

00:08:47.000 It is not worth empowering others.

00:08:49.000 You don't go out of your way to empower other countries and then say, oh, well, now that I've made you powerful, you must be really, really grateful to me and you'll just be my ally.

00:08:59.000 No, Machiavelli says, actually, that will only increase their jealousy and their worry about you and they will probably turn on you in the end.

00:09:09.000 All right, moving to chapter four.

00:09:11.000 Why Darius's kingdom conquered by Alexander the Great didn't rebel against his successors after his death.

00:09:18.000 Alexander the Great conquered Asia in a few years and died before getting a proper hold on it.

00:09:25.000 Given how hard it is to hold on to newly acquired states, one might have the thought that the whole territory would rise in revolt.

00:09:33.000 And yet seemingly strangely, his successors managed to hold on with no troubles except ones arising from their own ambition and jealousy.

00:09:41.000 You might not know this, but for instance, in Egypt, Cleopatra has that name because she was descended from from the Greeks, more well, Greek adjacent states, you know, from from the states that Alexander and his father had been involved in.

00:10:02.000 And one of his generals, Ptolemy ended up owning that area, ended up taking care of it after his death.

00:10:10.000 And so it is from Ptolemy's bloodline that Cleopatra descends.

00:10:16.000 So that's how long the impact of Alexander's conquest lasted.

00:10:21.000 There were still descendants of Alexander's generals ruling Egypt when Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony were arriving.

00:10:31.000 That's how long that impact was in that area.

00:10:36.000 Why?

00:10:37.000 Here is my explanation.

00:10:39.000 All of the principalities of which we have any record have been governed in one of two ways.

00:10:44.000 By a prince with help of others whom he appoints to serve as his ministers in governing the kingdom and whom he can dismiss at will.

00:10:53.000 Or by a prince together with his barons whose rank isn't given to them by him, but is possessed by hereditary right.

00:11:00.000 Right.

00:11:01.000 So this is a little bit of the recognition of the iron law of oligarchy that we've talked about from from elite theory from Robert Michels saying that you always end up with this ruling class.

00:11:16.000 He says there's two ways that you have a ruling class, either it is just the king who is appointing all these people and they serve at his pleasure.

00:11:23.000 He can dismiss them or put them in power because they're his ministers and he completely controls that.

00:11:29.000 Or it's the it's the prince and his barons.

00:11:33.000 These other nobles who have their own rank and they are the ones who they have that through heredity.

00:11:40.000 They have it through tradition.

00:11:42.000 And so the people are used to them having it wasn't that the king just gave it to them.

00:11:45.000 So you're always going to have this ruling class.

00:11:47.000 You're always going to have this kind of oligarchy that you arrive at.

00:11:50.000 But you might either have a version that is entirely dependent on the king for their power, or you might have a version in which the nobles, the other ministers, the other people involved actually have established power because of their position in the ruling class.

00:12:06.000 These barons have lands of their own and subjects who recognize them as their lords and are naturally devoted to them where a prince rules through his servants or ministers.

00:12:17.000 He has more authority because throughout the land, he's the only person the people recognize as above them.

00:12:23.000 If they obey anyone else, they're obeying him merely as a minister or official, and they have no special love for him.

00:12:30.000 He's fleshing out either the way the loyalty works.

00:12:33.000 Either people are following a minister, a governor, just because the king has appointed him, and therefore all their real loyalty is to the king, or they're following the barons because the barons have been the lords of their land for a long time.

00:12:46.000 They have built up trust or loyalty with the individual people there, and so they are loyal to the barons in addition to the king, not just because of the king, and this creates a very different power dynamic.

00:12:57.000 These are two forms of government that are illustrated in our own day by the Turk and the king of France.

00:13:03.000 The whole Turkish empire is governed by one lord, with everyone else who is involved in government being his servants.

00:13:11.000 Dividing his kingdom into districts, he sends them different administrators, whom he shifts and changes at his pleasure.

00:13:18.000 The king of France is surrounded by a host of nobles with long-established hereditary titles, each acknowledged and loved by his own subjects, and each with a high rank that the king can deprive him of only at his peril.

00:13:34.000 So this is really important because this is where our Western understanding of limited government comes from.

00:13:40.000 Everyone looks at kings and says, well, kings had all the power.

00:13:43.000 But Machiavelli is saying, no, kings do not have all the power in the Western tradition.

00:13:48.000 Maybe in a more Eastern tradition, these guys are all the Turk, the head of the empire. 0.61

00:13:55.000 He just runs it. He puts everybody in charge. Everybody obeys him.

00:13:58.000 But in the West, in places like France or England, you have these landed nobles who have been in charge of their area, their fiefdom, for often centuries.

00:14:09.000 And the people there have built up a respect. They're entrenched.

00:14:12.000 And so the king can't just go in and pull these barons, these nobles out of those positions without a cost.

00:14:18.000 In fact, he relies on them to govern those areas, and he pulls the noble out of those areas at his own peril.

00:14:25.000 He has to be very sure that he's going to be able to win if he challenges a noble, because if not, he might spark a full-on rebellion.

00:14:32.000 And so the king in the West is actually far more restrained than the king in the East.

00:14:38.000 And so this tradition of limited government might have ended up in our kind of modern American understanding of perhaps, you know, constitution and division and all of that stuff.

00:14:49.000 But where it starts is in this tradition of the landed nobles having their own bases of power.

00:14:55.000 And this is, again, something I have tried to impress on you when it comes to Bertrand de Juvenal and his spheres of power is the idea that it is not just the Constitution itself.

00:15:05.000 It's not just written words that restrain power. It is these deep alternative forms of political power that are seeded into your tradition, into your beliefs.

00:15:16.000 The king in France can't unseat his nobles because not because of some written piece of paper, but because that tradition, that longstanding political power exists in their hands.

00:15:29.000 Now, eventually, the French would create, would move towards a more absolute monarchy.

00:15:35.420 And one of the ways they did that was actually to create the palace in Versailles, where the king drew all of his nobles together, separating them from their local areas and their local people who supported them.

00:15:50.060 So the way that the king transitions from being a more Western and restrained king to becoming more like a more like an Eastern king without those restraints, a more totalizing power, he does that by unsettling the balance that had existed for hundreds of years with the nobility.

00:16:10.040 By cutting the nobility off and making the nobility obsessed with pleasing the king and isolating them from their peasants, their normal subjects, he actually removes more of the political power from them, removes more of the political opposition, removes more of the constraints on his authority.

00:16:29.800 And so that's why I talk so much about this. I want you guys to understand we talk about restraint for government, but where does it come from?

00:16:36.440 Does it come from ideology? Does it come from pieces of paper? No, it comes from these traditions.

00:16:43.900 This is where it comes from. It's not that these goals aren't good. It's not that the Western way of doing things isn't important.

00:16:50.040 It's that we need to understand where they come from and why we got them, because if we misdiagnose that, then we would try to apply that to our current position.

00:16:58.620 We don't understand why it's failing. And that's what I want us to get when we're reading a text like this.

00:17:02.940 If you think about the difference between the two states, you'll see that one, if it would be hard to conquer that of the Turks because they they because sorry, I got lost. 0.98

00:17:15.760 If you think about the difference between the two states, you'll see that it would be hard to conquer that of the Turk because that once conquered, it would be easy to hold on to hard to conquer, hard to conquer. 0.98

00:17:28.820 However, because an invader can't be brought in by a native nobility or expect his enterprise to be helped by the defection of those whom the sovereign has around him.

00:17:40.060 I've explained why it's because all these people are the prince's servants and they have obligations to him.

00:17:46.200 So they aren't easily corrupted. And if they are corrupted, they can't be they can't be of much help.

00:17:51.620 As I explained earlier, they can't carry the people with them.

00:17:55.920 So whoever attacks the Turk must reckon on finding a united people and will have a to rely on his own strength rather than a division of the other side. 0.93

00:18:06.760 So Machiavelli says, look, you know, we here in the future might have talked a lot about how much we love restrained government, but he says it has a weakness.

00:18:17.440 Because when you have this multidimensional power, when you have this power that's spread out and restricted by these barons, you can turn the barons against each other.

00:18:27.580 There might be something there might be something valuable in overturning the king.

00:18:31.160 And maybe you can offer the baron, hey, you know, if you swear allegiance to me instead of your current king, then maybe you're going to get that thing you always wanted.

00:18:37.800 Maybe you're going to get to, you know, throw off the yoke of this guy who has been trying to take over your area.

00:18:43.860 But when you have a king who's all of his ministers and all of his power is centralized because they all owe him a job, then you're going to be fighting everyone because there's no there's no upside in defecting.

00:18:55.520 But why am I a guy in power who's only in power because of another king?

00:19:00.320 Why am I going to turn around and say, actually, no, I'm going to overthrow that guy because then I lose all my status.

00:19:05.660 I don't have organic support of the people.

00:19:07.760 I can't expect to continue in my position once the king is gone.

00:19:10.800 So I'm going to fight even more rabidly for the king.

00:19:15.300 This is Leninism, right?

00:19:17.320 Like this is this is how Soviet Leninism takes over, because you take all the people who are disenfranchised and you say you are completely worthless in the old system.

00:19:28.480 You're not going to get anywhere.

00:19:29.800 But if you stick with me, I'll give you position.

00:19:33.320 I'll give you power.

00:19:34.160 And if you ever betray me, you'll immediately lose it all because it's all based on me.

00:19:38.760 The minute I'm gone, so are you.

00:19:41.000 That is why many kings and many Soviet leaders often prefer weak supporters, supporters that can't build their own base.

00:19:52.860 Remember, we talked about this with Aristotle a few weeks ago, if it was even a few weeks ago, when we read about how tyrants keep power.

00:20:00.400 They don't want strong men.

00:20:02.120 They don't want men who are going to stand up and provide leadership.

00:20:05.780 They want people who are going to be entirely dependent on them for their power.

00:20:09.900 Some say the bubbles in an arrow truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth.

00:20:15.900 Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light.

00:20:19.380 Rich, creamy, chocolatey arrow truffle.

00:20:22.400 Feel the arrow bubbles melt.

00:20:24.440 It's mind bubbling.

00:20:26.200 But if an attacker overcomes the prince of a country governed as Turkey is, defeating him in battle so that his armies are beyond repair, he has nothing more to worry about except for the prince's family. 0.57

00:20:38.340 And once that is exterminated, there is no one else to fear.

00:20:41.860 So, upsides and downsides, right?

00:20:44.140 Like, if you have this unitary system where all power flows from this, like, prince or sultan or whatever we're calling the head of Turkey at the time.

00:20:52.100 If all power flows from him, then you can't, like, turn these other people against him because they're all dependent on him for power.

00:21:02.140 There are no nobles who have independent power.

00:21:04.620 So, you just, you know, are going up against a unified nation because there's nothing that you can offer these people.

00:21:11.280 They get it all from the king.

00:21:12.440 However, the downside for that system is once it's defeated, it just completely collapses because there's no other power centers to push back.

00:21:23.240 If you conquer a king more like the king of France at the time, then you are going to have to contend with all of his nobles.

00:21:30.920 Yes, maybe you beat the king, but all of those nobles still have knights.

00:21:34.240 They still have peasants.

00:21:35.380 They still have resources.

00:21:36.640 They still have lands.

00:21:37.520 They still have the capacity and leadership to push back.

00:21:40.820 But if you defeat someone like the Turk, well, then it all just gets collapsed, right? 1.00

00:21:46.180 Like, there's just no one left who has any real authority.

00:21:49.240 All the guys who had authority only had it because of the king.

00:21:51.700 People are only following because of the king.

00:21:53.640 And once he's gone, well, then, you know, maybe you got to get rid of the family, right?

00:21:57.560 We've talked about that before. 0.97

00:21:59.360 Machiavelli's big on killing the whole royal family. 0.94

00:22:01.600 But once you kill the whole royal family, there's just no one left. 0.98

00:22:04.460 There's no one left to leave.

00:22:05.400 There's no one who has the authority or the ability or the courage or the motivation.

00:22:10.220 And so you're just going to run through the whole country.

00:22:12.540 So there's upside to this, the unification.

00:22:16.180 There's no way to wedge it apart.

00:22:17.960 But once it collapses, the whole thing goes.

00:22:20.060 There's no one left.

00:22:20.900 Because there was no individual political powers, you couldn't wedge them against the king.

00:22:25.200 But once you get rid of the king, there's no one left to fight you because there's nobody who has the ability to push back.

00:22:31.900 The opposite is the case in kingdoms governed in the French way.

00:22:34.700 You can always make inroads into such a kingdom with the help of a baron or two.

00:22:40.240 Because there are always some who are disaffected and want change.

00:22:45.900 I've already explained how much people can open the way for you to invade their country and help you be victorious. 0.90

00:22:51.720 But the effort to hold onto this territory will involve you in endless difficulties, problems concerning those who helped you and those who you have overthrown.

00:23:03.000 It won't be enough to merely destroy the prince's family because there will be barons who are ready to lead new revolts.

00:23:09.500 You'll never be able to satisfy them or destroy them.

00:23:12.600 You'll lose to the state as soon as they see a chance to take it from you.

00:23:17.420 So, again, positives and negatives to the Western model.

00:23:23.860 Yes, you can pretty much always find someone who's willing to defect.

00:23:27.840 There's always someone who's fed up with the king, who's been run down, cheated, lied to, scorned in some way.

00:23:36.360 Again, he's mentioned multiple times previously in this text about how often you get someone inviting you in.

00:23:43.460 Really, it's very rare that you just go in by yourself.

00:23:46.620 Usually there's some locals who have some kind of disagreement that you're expecting to use.

00:23:51.700 And, again, you can think about American military attempts.

00:23:55.200 Every time we go in, we try to find someone in Vietnam or Korea or Afghanistan or Iraq, and we say, oh, these are going to be the new leaders.

00:24:04.580 They're going to be the people who are the ones who are ultimately going to stand up with us.

00:24:09.460 And they're looking to do what we're doing, and we're going to use them to defeat the bad guys in the area.

00:24:14.920 Like, classic, classic move.

00:24:17.080 However, he says, if you have this model, yes, you can always turn a few people in and get a foothold in the area.

00:24:24.080 But it tends to be a lot harder and a longer slog to completely control things.

00:24:30.020 Because you just always have these independent areas that still have political power, that still function, that are still able to push back.

00:24:37.340 So you're constantly fighting against them.

00:24:39.300 And if for even a moment you hesitate, if for even a moment you lose something, all of a sudden these guys are going to try to take the state away from you because they see that weakness and they are still in power in their areas.

00:24:51.820 Now, if you look at the kind of government that Darius had, you can see that it resembled that of the Turks.

00:24:56.940 So that Alexander had first to defeat him utterly and take control of the territory with no inside help.

00:25:03.440 But after he had done that and Darius had died, Alexander was securely in control of the country.

00:25:09.300 For the reasons I have given.

00:25:11.200 If this successor had stayed united, if his successors had stayed united, they would have enjoyed it undisturbed.

00:25:19.180 Because the only disturbances in the kingdom came from their own infighting.

00:25:24.760 But kingdoms organized in the French way can't be held together by their conquerors as easily as that.

00:25:33.260 Hence, the repeated uprisings against the Romans in Spain, Gaul, and Greece.

00:25:39.520 Because each of these lands was divided up into many smaller principalities.

00:25:43.740 For while the memory of these lasted, i.e. as long as the people felt loyalty to their local baron, the Romans couldn't feel safe.

00:25:51.580 So Alexander comes in, he takes over Darius' kingdom, and because so much of it is organized under the authority of Darius, he has to work really hard.

00:26:01.940 He gets no help on the inside.

00:26:03.200 But once he's in, there's just nothing they can do.

00:26:06.280 There's no longer an effective warrior class or leadership class that can continue to battle on, and he can just put his own people in there.

00:26:13.560 However, he then points to the Romans in Spain or Gaul or Greece, these places did not have unified command structures.

00:26:22.660 And so even though the Romans entered in and took control and often were able to leverage these people against each other,

00:26:28.300 there was this constant threat that some other chieftain, some other warlord, some other ruler would be able to step in and create problems.

00:26:36.180 But after a long period of Roman rule had erased those memories and thus extinguished the local loyalties,

00:26:43.060 I'm going to read that sentence again because it's super important.

00:26:47.100 But after a long period of Roman rule had erased their memories and had thus extinguished local loyalties, the Roman grip became secure. 0.95

00:26:57.500 So what do you need?

00:26:59.180 You need people who are no longer remembering their heritage, no longer remembering their traditions. 1.00

00:27:06.180 No longer remembering their freedom, no longer remembering their local loyalties to each other.

00:27:12.680 Places with local loyalties are far harder to conquer for a long time.

00:27:19.120 And you really need these to fade out if you want to control people.

00:27:23.300 Well, guess what?

00:27:25.200 We're spending a lot of time trying to dissolve pretty much all local loyalties in the U.S.

00:27:29.580 If you think about the U.S. over time, it's the story of extinguishing local loyalties.

00:27:36.360 People used to be far more loyal to their state than they were to the nation.

00:27:40.980 And then when we saw in the Civil War, people literally leave the wider country so they could be loyal to their individual states.

00:27:51.540 After that occurred, we realized, oh, we can't have that anymore.

00:27:54.840 If we want to run the empire, we need to centralize all control.

00:27:57.980 We need to get people to stop being loyal to their states.

00:28:01.100 We don't want Robert E. Lee to be loyal to Virginia.

00:28:03.440 We want them to be loyal to the federal government.

00:28:08.140 So we need to abolish state identities.

00:28:11.140 We need to abolish state authority.

00:28:12.900 We need to dissolve federalism.

00:28:15.380 And by the way, a lot of conservatives basically support that that happened.

00:28:20.180 They won't say it in those terms.

00:28:21.640 They won't phrase it that way.

00:28:23.840 But that is what happened.

00:28:25.320 And they support it because ultimately they believe that that was the right outcome.

00:28:30.140 Maybe you do too.

00:28:30.980 But this is still a dynamic we're watching.

00:28:33.660 Whether you think that it's right or wrong that it happened in any given place, that's not the question here.

00:28:39.720 The question is, is Machiavelli's analysis something that we can recognize and understand in a more modern context so that we can check the validity of his theory?

00:28:50.200 And the answer is yes.

00:28:51.980 We can see this play out in our own history, not just the Romans or the Italians.

00:28:58.000 It has maintained even when the Romans were warring against one another in that infighting, each Roman governor could rely on the support of the territory he had governed and had influence in.

00:29:11.640 Because once the families of that former prince had been wiped out, the natives had no authority that they could recognize except that of the Romans.

00:29:19.180 So even after, so after the local loyalties are dissolved, the local identity is dissolved, even when the Civil War breaks out in Rome and you have Julius Caesar against Pompey and all these, you know, you have Mark, you know, they have.

00:29:32.420 I can't remember people's names all of a sudden.

00:29:39.380 Anyway, when you have these different Marius and Sulla, that's OK, that's what I was reaching for. 0.99

00:29:45.900 Or Mark Anthony and Octavian.

00:29:48.200 There we go.

00:29:48.740 Oh, they're all coming back to me.

00:29:49.720 You know, even when you have these different civil wars breaking out and these different generals, guess what?

00:29:55.640 The provinces would be loyal to the Roman general because they had lost all their other identity.

00:30:00.400 They no longer saw themselves, as they once had, as conquered peoples who were fighting back.

00:30:05.880 They had become just Roman provinces.

00:30:08.200 And so even when the Romans were fighting amongst themselves, the only thing the people knew how to do was organize behind their new Roman identity.

00:30:14.420 They couldn't take that opportunity, even in the middle of the Civil War, to break out and say, no, we're going to be free people again.

00:30:20.240 No, they lost that local identity over generations.

00:30:23.700 And now they were powerless to do anything but follow what the Romans were doing, even when the Romans were obviously weak and could have easily been thrown out of those provinces.

00:30:34.060 If you bear all this in mind, you won't be surprised by how easily Alexander got a firm grip on Asia or how hard it was for many others.

00:30:42.220 You know, Pyrrhus, for example, to retain the territories that they had conquered.

00:30:47.640 This came not from these conquerors differing in virtue, but from a difference in their characters, in the difference of the characters of the states that they had conquered.

00:30:58.020 So when you're conquering, it's not enough to think, oh, well, it's just one size fits all.

00:31:03.480 We just do the thing.

00:31:05.000 No, you need to consider how the areas you're conquering were constituted.

00:31:09.500 What are their histories?

00:31:10.860 What are their structures?

00:31:12.320 What is their leadership like?

00:31:13.760 Have you built up enough rapport inside there to more or less control the area?

00:31:18.200 Or is your power still relatively weak?

00:31:21.020 Like these questions are critical when you're considering going in.

00:31:24.900 You can't just one size fits all the whole thing.

00:31:26.640 You need to understand the nature, the systems involved in order to understand where you are and how best to proceed.

00:31:34.140 All right, here.

00:31:39.660 Chapter five.

00:31:40.400 How to govern cities or principalities that lived under their own law before they were annexed.

00:31:46.140 Next, when a conqueror acquires a state that has been accustomed to living under its own laws and in freedom, he has three options if he wants to hold on to his conquest.

00:31:58.080 He can destroy it, smashing everything, go live there himself, or let them continue with their present system of law while paying taxes to him and setting up there a small governing group which will keep the state friendly to you.

00:32:13.820 So if you go in and you conquer an area, you can either just wipe it out, say, okay, get rid of the inhabitants, get rid of the structures.

00:32:21.240 I'm just taking the land.

00:32:22.300 I don't care about any of that.

00:32:24.360 Or you can go there yourself and impose your will directly.

00:32:29.560 We talked about that in our last reading.

00:32:31.960 Or you can allow them to continue as they were, continue their laws, but just have them pay taxes and send, like, some people there to govern them and set up a friendly state, but don't put too much on them, right?

00:32:45.300 And, again, this is a reiteration of much of what he said about conquering last time.

00:32:49.660 Okay?

00:32:49.940 You don't want to shake things up if you're not going to be there yourself.

00:32:52.860 You want to keep things about as consistent as possible so that you're not encouraging rebellion.

00:32:59.300 Such a governing group, having been set up by the conquering prince, will know that it can't survive without his friendly support, so it will do its best to maintain his authority.

00:33:08.760 Someone who wants to retain his hold on a city accustomed to freedom will do best to get its citizens, cooperate with them.

00:33:15.640 All right, so he says, if you're going to continue to govern a place that has already established itself, is used to being free, is used to governing itself, you don't, again, you want them to cooperate.

00:33:25.500 You don't want to change very much.

00:33:26.920 And the good news is that the people you're putting in charge, they're going to be entirely loyal to you because they know they're only there because of you.

00:33:33.520 They don't have any illusions about having control of the area, having any local authority or power.

00:33:38.680 They are very much like the Turkish vassal, like, entirely dependent on you for power. 1.00

00:33:43.400 They're not going to push back.

00:33:44.160 Consider the examples of the Spartans and the Romans.

00:33:48.200 The Spartans held Athens and Thebes, setting up a small local government in each place.

00:33:53.240 Yet, they lost them.

00:33:54.880 The Romans reduced Capua, Carthage, and Numetia to rubble and therefore didn't lose them. 1.00

00:34:00.320 They tried holding on to Greece in pretty much the way the Spartans did, allowing it to be free and retain its old laws, and this failed.

00:34:08.120 So they had to destroy a good many Greek cities in order to hold on to the territory as a whole. 0.96

00:34:13.360 But the fact is that it's no safe way.

00:34:16.400 The fact is there's no safe way to retain the territory except by destroying it.

00:34:21.320 So brutal, but true, right?

00:34:23.520 Like, the only 100% way to make sure that you can continue to hold on to a territory is to wipe out all the people inside of it.

00:34:29.840 Someone who becomes a master of a city accustomed to freedom and doesn't destroy it can't expect to be destroyed by it because in rebellion, the rebels will always rally to the cry of freedom and to the old ways of doing things, which is never forgotten.

00:34:44.100 Whatever steps are taken to prevent this, unless the people have fallen into disunity among themselves or have been scattered.

00:34:52.560 They will always remember the label free and their old ways and will rally to them at every chance they get, as Pisa did after a century of bondage in the Florentines. 0.64

00:35:02.780 So always dangerous to try to conquer a people who are used to freedom, used to having their own control because they're going to remember that they're going to keep it in their memory until you've let it fade.

00:35:12.320 Like we talked about the Romans over a very long period of time, people are going to fight back and they're always going to rally to that cry.

00:35:19.280 You have to wipe them out or kind of like culturally extinguish them and by kind of owning them and making them forget their history, forget their culture, making them entirely dependent on you. 0.95

00:35:30.140 But if you let them just continue to like keep those old ways, keep those laws, keep those dreams alive, then they're eventually going to want to fight back against you.

00:35:38.940 They're eventually going to buck up against your control of the area.

00:35:41.920 But but but when a city or country has been living under a prince and his family has has been exterminated, the people won't be able to choose from among themselves a new prince to replace the old one.

00:35:53.120 And having acquired the habit of obedience, they don't they won't know how to live in freedom.

00:35:59.200 So they'll be slow to give up to take up arms, making it easier for invade for an invading prince to win them over to his side.

00:36:06.100 And republics, on the other hand, have more vitality, more hatred and a stronger desire for revenge, which will never allow them to forget their former freedom.

00:36:14.620 So they have this. So the safest way is to destroy them or go and live among them. 0.79

00:36:19.780 So as he's been reinforcing here multiple times in multiple ways, it is way easier to conquer a kingdom, even though it's harder to get your foothold in once you've got it.

00:36:29.400 Once once the monarch is dead and his family's dead, there's really just going to be no resistance because the people are used to being ruled.

00:36:36.860 You're just a new guy doing the same thing. Not a big deal.

00:36:40.440 However, republics have to be individualistic. They have to have a certain level of vitality.

00:36:45.200 They have to have a hatred and a strong desire for revenge.

00:36:49.180 Interesting perspective. You probably won't hear that one from people calling America constitutional republic.

00:36:55.120 But Machiavelli says these are key aspects of a republic.

00:36:59.700 And so if you do conquer a republic, you should either just wipe the people out because they're just never going to be your subjects or you need to live among them. 0.95

00:37:07.060 You need to convince them from your direct rule and assert your own direct rule over the area.

00:37:14.160 Chapter six.

00:37:16.600 New principalities that are acquired by one's own arms and virtue.

00:37:20.500 I'm going to I'm going to be dealing with entirely with entirely new principalities in this discussion, and I'll take the best example of print of prints and of state.

00:37:31.080 There's nothing surprising about this.

00:37:32.820 People nearly always walk in paths beaten by others, acting in an imitation of their deeds.

00:37:39.680 But it's never possible for them to keep entirely to the beaten path or achieve the level of virtue of the models that you are imitating.

00:37:46.820 A wise man will follow in the footsteps of great men, imitating ones that have been supreme so that if his virtue doesn't reach the level of theirs, it will at least have a touch of it.

00:37:59.360 Compare an archer aiming at a distant target, knowing the limits of his bow's virtue, he aims high, hoping that the arrows as it descends will hit his target.

00:38:07.960 So this is very much Thomas Carlyle's great man theory, right?

00:38:12.800 Like, how do you become a great leader?

00:38:14.560 By following great leaders.

00:38:16.180 You're probably never going to do exactly what they did.

00:38:20.620 You want to follow in their footsteps, but they will have been in a different situation.

00:38:25.680 And in fact, you probably won't even be as virtuous as they are and probably never achieve exactly what they achieved.

00:38:31.300 But if you're aiming for that high target, if you're aiming for something beyond what you are capable of, you're far more or less likely to completely fail when you fall short.

00:38:41.360 You're far more likely to hit the target.

00:38:43.160 He gives the archer aiming well above the target, hoping that over time, the power of his bow drives the arrow to at least hit the target as the arrow falls.

00:38:53.600 So if you're aiming for greatness, if you're aiming for the deeds of great men and you fall a little short, well, at least you were a good man.

00:39:00.840 At least you were an impressive man.

00:39:02.620 At least you were a man who was doing impressive things in the mold, in the footsteps, in the path that other great men have achieved.

00:39:11.180 And that's a very common practice.

00:39:13.860 This is what he says.

00:39:14.720 Wise men involve themselves in.

00:39:16.780 Wise men follow other great men.

00:39:19.460 Gee, I wonder why it's so important for the left to get rid of the idea of great men.

00:39:24.260 I wonder why the way we change history has radically changed to try to remove the idea that dynamic leaders are a part of that.

00:39:32.100 I wonder why the post-war consensus is so interested in squashing the idea that there are great men of history that one should follow.

00:39:40.340 Hmm.

00:39:41.020 I wonder if there's any reason that our whole society is moved to try to more or less expunge this idea.

00:39:47.760 I say, therefore, that in an entirely new principality headed by someone who has only recently become a prince, how much difficulty the conqueror has in keeping his new acquired state depends on how much virtue he has.

00:40:01.420 The more virtue, the less difficulty.

00:40:04.200 Now, he can't have risen from being a private citizen to being a prince without some help from either virtue or fortune.

00:40:11.080 And clearly, either of those will somewhat lessen the difficulty in holding on to the new state.

00:40:16.760 Though undue reliance on fortune doesn't work well in the long run.

00:40:22.000 Although aid such a new prince will have is that having no other state where he can live as a prince, he is compelled to take up residence personally in his new state.

00:40:34.580 So it says, okay, if you weren't a ruler before and you're becoming a ruler, right, you are a new prince, you're a new monarch, then there's really only two ways you elevated yourself into that position since you weren't born that way.

00:40:47.920 You either were very, very good at what you did, you were high in virtue, or you were very, very lucky.

00:40:53.180 You'll see this in Machiavelli a lot.

00:40:55.480 He recognizes the role of luck, right?

00:40:58.440 He recognizes that ultimately luck is critical.

00:41:01.980 However, he always minimizes your reliance on luck.

00:41:04.580 He says, you shouldn't basically ignore luck.

00:41:07.820 It's going to be real.

00:41:08.600 It's going to be a factor.

00:41:09.660 We can't deny it.

00:41:10.860 However, you should minimize your reliance on luck as much as possible.

00:41:16.800 And if you're a prince that has acquired this area because you're a new prince, well, you don't have anywhere else to go to.

00:41:23.480 It's not like you were the king of France and then you decided to conquer Italy and whatever, I'm not going to go over there because I like living in France.

00:41:30.560 And if I lose it, it's not a big deal.

00:41:32.040 No, if you're a new prince and this is the only place you control, you're going to defend it to the death.

00:41:36.720 You're going to live there.

00:41:37.900 You're going to rule it personally because you've got nowhere else to go.

00:41:40.800 You've got nowhere else to be.

00:41:41.600 Your loyalty and your attention and your power is all focused here.

00:41:45.280 So new princes have that advantage.

00:41:47.020 Now let us turn to the proper subject of this chapter, namely those who become princes by their own virtue and not through fortune.

00:42:12.120 Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and they're like are the most excellent examples.

00:42:19.300 In the case of Moses, there isn't much to discuss because he simply did what God told him to do, though he should be admired for being found worthy to have conversations with God.

00:42:30.860 So this is a very interesting passage, all right?

00:42:33.400 This is where your Leo Strausses would start to see different layers in Machiavelli.

00:42:40.800 So he is praising simultaneously Moses as one of these princes that should be emulated.

00:42:48.240 He knows that this is a guy who is elevated, created more or less the Jewish nation, and is understood as a great figure in his tradition.

00:43:01.740 So he needs to acknowledge that fact.

00:43:03.600 But simultaneously, he seems to kind of dismiss Moses' ability.

00:43:08.220 He says, look, yeah, technically, he didn't just get it through fortune.

00:43:11.860 Technically, he created this.

00:43:14.960 But ultimately, it was really God that did it, right?

00:43:16.900 Like God directly intervened.

00:43:18.920 He's just listening and doing whatever God tells him to do.

00:43:21.560 So it's not his own cunning.

00:43:23.340 It's not his own wisdom.

00:43:24.460 It's God's, right?

00:43:25.740 And so really, how much credit can we give him?

00:43:29.200 Though he said throws in, but we should admire Moses for being worthy of conversations with God.

00:43:34.200 So we're not completely dismissing him.

00:43:35.860 And this is kind of Machiavelli's passive-aggressive relationship with Christianity on a regular basis and the divine.

00:43:43.880 He kind of acknowledges that it's there.

00:43:46.080 He acknowledges that he's important.

00:43:47.800 But he also kind of throws a lot of shade at it.

00:43:49.960 He's always questioning people who are relying on it or their ability or really how sincere you should be or ultimately its value.

00:43:58.260 But he always tries to give some level of deference in there simultaneously so he can't be accused of being like anti-Christian, right?

00:44:05.780 Again, you can defer a lot from this.

00:44:07.940 You can pick this apart for a while.

00:44:09.700 But an interesting thing to stick your pen in and kind of notice because that will come up later throughout the book.

00:44:15.900 But when we look into Cyrus and others who have acquired or founded kingdoms, we'll find that they're all admirable and their actions and governing structures won't be found in fear to what Moses did under his great instructor.

00:44:29.300 So he says right here, basically, look, yeah, these guys did it on their own.

00:44:32.720 And unlike Moses, they didn't have the help, but they end up with the same result.

00:44:37.680 Even though he had God on his side and he was just listening to God, these guys are just as good.

00:44:41.920 Again, kind of that little elbow.

00:44:43.500 And in explaining their and in examining their lives and their achievements, we don't find them owing anything to fortune beyond their initial opportunity, which brought them the material to shape as they wanted.

00:44:57.740 Without that opportunity, their virtue of mine would have come to nothing.

00:45:01.800 And without that virtue, the opportunity wouldn't have led to anything.

00:45:05.460 So, again, we always see this acknowledgement that fortune is critical, right?

00:45:08.740 Look, if you don't end up in the right place, if you're not provided the opportunity, it doesn't matter.

00:45:12.960 You could be the best guy in the world.

00:45:14.800 But if you never get that crack, if forces don't align, then it just doesn't matter.

00:45:19.140 But once you get the opportunity, it's all about you.

00:45:22.620 What do you do with that opportunity?

00:45:24.680 So perhaps Machiavelli would be one of our biggest advocates of fortune favoring the bold, right?

00:45:32.000 He's, again, not ignoring the fact that random chance fortune is part of what's going on here.

00:45:37.620 But he always insists that we should take control once those opportunities arrive.

00:45:44.680 And I think if we're honest, a lot of us can see that, right?

00:45:48.540 Everyone complains about not getting the break.

00:45:50.540 Well, we've all kind of seen people who've gotten the break and just never really did anything with it.

00:45:55.300 And then we also know people who are incredibly talented but just never got the break.

00:45:58.460 Now, we might judge harshly those that got the break and never took it.

00:46:04.840 But there's always some cope we have.

00:46:06.580 Oh, I can't risk that.

00:46:09.020 I can't do that.

00:46:11.000 I can't put myself out there.

00:46:12.380 But consistently, the difference between, you know, everyone's got a random chance.

00:46:17.100 But of two people who get the same chance, the difference is almost always the guy who seizes it.

00:46:21.820 And we've all seen the person who's been repeatedly, you know, offered the chance and they don't seize it.

00:46:27.620 But they complain and they pretend that they're somehow a victim of fortune.

00:46:32.200 And that's what Machiavelli is trying to avoid.

00:46:35.280 For the Israelites to be willing to follow Moses, he had to find them in Egypt, enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians. 0.98

00:46:41.500 For Romulus to become king of Rome and founder of the state, he had to be abandoned at birth, which led to his leaving Alba.

00:46:50.240 For Cyrus to achieve what he did, he had to find the Persians discontented with the government of the Medes and the Medes soft and effeminate through their long peace. 0.97

00:46:59.140 Theseus couldn't have shown his virtue if he hadn't found the Athenians defeated and scattered.

00:47:05.780 So these opportunities enabled those men to prosper and their great virtue enabled them to seize the opportunity and lead their country to being noble and extremely, extremely prosperous.

00:47:15.880 Men like these who become princes through the exercise of their own virtue find it hard to achieve the status, but easy to keep it.

00:47:23.920 Once the sources of difficulty in acquiring the status of prince is having to introduce new rules and methods to establish the government and to keep it secure.

00:47:34.860 So this is something, once again, that Machiavelli hits on a lot.

00:47:39.800 If you acquire these things who are hereditary means, you're just fortunate to have been born this way.

00:47:46.060 Well, you're going to have a pretty easy time keeping them, but you don't get the credit.

00:47:51.120 You didn't do it.

00:47:52.300 But if you're a new kid, you have to do the biggest thing.

00:47:56.560 You have to do the biggest thing and you have to, you have to, sorry, you have to do the biggest thing and you have to create new modes and orders.

00:48:07.720 You have to create new rules, new understandings, new institutions, new armies, new borders, new cultures.

00:48:15.280 It's all new and it's all yours.

00:48:17.940 That's an incredible feat if you can do it, but it's very difficult.

00:48:22.180 But if you can, you create something amazing.

00:48:24.800 We bear in mind that nothing is more difficult than to set up, more likely to fail and more likely dangerous to conduct than a system of than a new system of government, because the bringer of the new system will make enemies of everyone who will be under the old, who did well under the old system.

00:48:43.020 While those who may do well under the new system won't support it warmly.

00:48:48.120 Why not?

00:48:48.880 Partly because of fear of their opponents who have the laws on their side and partly because of men who are hard to convince of anything and don't really believe in new things until they have had a long enough experience with them.

00:48:59.400 So those who are hostile will attack whenever they have the chance, while others will defend so halfheartedly that they don't get the prince or themselves out of danger.

00:49:08.820 So he says, this is the problem with founding new modes and orders, because when you try to set up this new system of government, you're always in the most dangerous period because the people who were benefiting from the old system, they'll hate you because obviously they're losing all their benefits.

00:49:25.060 They organize the whole system to be under their control.

00:49:28.960 So they're going to be very angry when they lose that system and therefore lose all the benefits that they had oriented themselves towards.

00:49:35.900 And all the new people who are going to benefit from your new order, well, they're wishy-washy.

00:49:41.740 They're not sure.

00:49:42.620 They've not seen something like this work before.

00:49:45.000 So they're not really committed.

00:49:46.380 What if something goes wrong?

00:49:48.140 What if they don't get everything that they were promised?

00:49:51.240 And so all of a sudden, you have to be far more worried about the hostile elements, the people who are not benefiting, because they're losing everything they have.

00:50:00.200 And you have to worry about your allies because they're only halfheartedly committed because they don't see what the benefits could be.

00:50:06.440 Once again, we can kind of apply this to the Trump scenario, right?

00:50:11.060 Comes in, tries to set up this new MAGA coalition.

00:50:15.280 The old Republicans are scared because they're oriented around Con Inc.

00:50:19.700 They've got their whole system built around siphoning money from these neocon organizations, all these mainstream organizations.

00:50:27.660 They don't want the order to be overturned.

00:50:30.100 And the new Trump allies, the new MAGA coalition, maybe some of the tech bros, you know, the Bernie bros who came over, they're kind of supporting you because they hate the old system.

00:50:39.640 But are they really going to sacrifice for you?

00:50:42.600 You know, is Elon Musk, is Mark Zuckerberg, is Jeff Bezos going to start performing and putting themselves out there for you?

00:50:51.180 I mean, what if they don't get enough?

00:50:52.700 What if they don't get enough from the new system?

00:50:54.160 I mean, many of those guys were already getting plenty from the old system, so they probably fall more under Category 1.

00:50:59.540 But you see my point.

00:51:01.080 You know, you get a lot of half-hearted support from these people because ultimately they haven't seen the Trump doctrine work.

00:51:06.880 You know, think how hard it was to get people to believe you could do deportations or tariffs or these kind of things.

00:51:11.920 They hadn't seen it work in a long time, so they're very skeptical.

00:51:15.140 And the people who are bought into the old system with no tariffs or open borders, they wanted to keep that.

00:51:20.300 So you had half-hearted support from your supporters and full-throated pushback from your enemies.

00:51:26.280 For throughout exploration of these matters, therefore, we have to ask concerning these innovators, these stirs up of new states, to carry through their projects.

00:51:39.940 Must they depend on others or can they rely on themselves?

00:51:42.680 That is, must they ask others for help or can they use force?

00:51:46.520 If they need help, they are sure to fail and they won't achieve anything.

00:51:50.160 For when they rely on themselves, they use force and aren't running much risk.

00:51:56.360 That's why, excuse me, that's why armed prophets always conquered and unarmed ones have always been destroyed.

00:52:04.580 Along with all the, along with all these, sorry, all along with all this, there is the fact that people don't stay steady.

00:52:14.040 It's easy to persuade them of something, but hard to keep them persuaded.

00:52:17.420 When they stop believing in their new prince, force must be used to make them believe.

00:52:23.640 And provision for doing that must be made beforehand.

00:52:28.180 So he says a couple of interesting things here.

00:52:30.580 Like, if you need to rely basically on your own power, don't rely on anything else.

00:52:35.680 If you're relying on other people, you're just going to lose.

00:52:37.800 Because you are not going to have control.

00:52:39.840 And when the hard times come, they're just going to abandon you or they're going to fight for themselves.

00:52:43.320 Like, they're just not going to do that.

00:52:44.300 So he says, that's why you need to be an armed prophet.

00:52:47.180 The armed prophets always conquer and the unarmed ones are destroyed. 0.97

00:52:51.180 You need to control your own arms.

00:52:53.120 You need to control your own army.

00:52:54.880 And this is, again, another theme throughout Machiavelli.

00:52:57.440 No standing armies, no mercenaries.

00:53:01.000 You need to have people who are loyal to you and only to you under your command.

00:53:07.160 And you get to command them whenever.

00:53:09.440 Because then when bad things happen, you can just use that force and squash it immediately.

00:53:14.660 And it will happen.

00:53:15.540 Like, people will basically walk away from the revolution.

00:53:19.780 They will walk away from the new king.

00:53:21.220 They will walk away from the new modes and orders.

00:53:23.180 And you must be able to crush that rebellion immediately at that time.

00:53:27.560 Now, this passage, this famous phrase that all armed prophets conquer and all unarmed prophets are destroyed is also famous because it has some interesting implications.

00:53:39.920 Was Jesus an armed prophet or an unarmed prophet?

00:53:45.040 I mean, most people would say an unarmed prophet.

00:53:46.940 Was he destroyed or did he conquer?

00:53:51.120 Well, interestingly, he was destroyed.

00:53:54.640 And then he was conquered.

00:53:56.580 He was the conqueror.

00:53:58.500 Eventually, Christianity conquered the whole thing. 0.98

00:54:01.100 Eventually, Christianity conquered all of the Roman Empire, even though the unarmed prophet was destroyed by it. 0.98

00:54:08.040 I mean, we don't believe he was destroyed.

00:54:09.880 We believe he was risen on the third day and rules in heaven.

00:54:12.260 But you understand the implications that Machiavelli is making here.

00:54:15.100 Perhaps Jesus isn't the right model.

00:54:18.440 Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned by Jesus's crucifixion.

00:54:21.440 Or maybe Machiavelli is wrong.

00:54:24.060 Maybe the idea that only armed prophets can conquer is ultimately incorrect and that there's another force involved.

00:54:31.220 Either way, a very interesting challenge in that day.

00:54:35.160 If Moses, Cyrus, and Theseus, and Romulus hadn't had soldiers at their command, they couldn't have enforced their constitution for long.

00:54:44.200 See what happened in our own day to Father, again, I will butcher all the Italian here, Girolamo Savonarola. 1.00

00:54:52.820 He was overthrown along with his new scheme of things as soon as the mass of the people stopped believing in him.

00:54:59.860 And he had no way of keeping steadfast those who believed or of converting those that didn't.

00:55:08.320 So the likes of these, i.e. Moses, Cyrus, etc., find it hard to reach their goal because there is a great danger in the way.

00:55:16.660 But their virtue will enable them to overcome it.

00:55:19.720 But when this has been done and the danger has passed, and those who resented their success have been exterminated,

00:55:27.620 they will begin to respond and they will continue afterwards powerful, secure, honored, and happy.

00:55:33.200 So the armed prophet has soldiers at his command.

00:55:36.420 He can use force to secure power.

00:55:40.920 Yes, he might have a harder time coming in and conquering, but once he's there, he will have a better ability to hold power.

00:55:49.340 A fifth example is not on the same level as the other four, but his case is somewhat like theirs.

00:55:54.600 And I will bring it in as a stand-in for all the other cases that are like it.

00:56:00.000 I am referring to Jairo the Syracusan.

00:56:02.720 From being an ordinary citizen, this man rose to be the prince of Syracuse.

00:56:07.980 And he, like the others, owed nothing to fortune except the opportunity.

00:56:16.100 In a time of military threat, the Syracusans chose him to head their troops. 0.69

00:56:21.780 Afterwards, they rewarded him by making him their prince.

00:56:25.280 He was of such great virtue, even as an ordinary citizen, that someone wrote of him that he had everything he needed to be a king except a kingdom.

00:56:37.800 He abolished the old army and established a new one.

00:56:40.760 So, abolished the old order and completely created anew.

00:56:45.120 Gave up on old alliances and made new ones.

00:56:49.960 And that gave him the foundation, his own soldiers, his own allies, on which he could build anything he wanted to build.

00:56:56.640 Thus, it was very hard for him to acquire something, his position of power, and that he had little trouble holding on to it.

00:57:03.820 Okay, so last crossover here.

00:57:06.760 A lot of people look at Donald Trump taking power and they say, okay, he won the election.

00:57:11.180 Why isn't he in charge?

00:57:12.980 Well, because he's not really in charge.

00:57:15.120 He's inheriting an old system.

00:57:17.720 He's inheriting a system that already has its own biases, that already has its own little fiefdoms, its own little power structures, its own little loyalties.

00:57:26.220 And so, even though he's technically in charge of it, he's not really in charge of it because he didn't found new modes and orders.

00:57:32.460 He's relying on old people's arms, old people's systems, old people's alliances.

00:57:37.220 And so, he's a creature of that system until he gets rid of them.

00:57:42.800 You think of somebody like the FBI.

00:57:44.600 The FBI is still incredibly corrupt.

00:57:46.360 It's still full of people who hate conservatives, hate right-wingers, would have loved to see, you know, every J6-er rot in jail along with Donald Trump. 1.00

00:57:56.820 We're probably rooting for him to get assassinated.

00:57:58.700 And then you have the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.

00:58:04.160 And ICE has been given a military-style budget almost entirely built up under Donald Trump.

00:58:10.000 So, the FBI, the old order, full of people who are no longer loyal because they don't like Donald Trump.

00:58:17.880 They're loyal to the old order. 0.55

00:58:19.760 You've got ICE largely built up of new people who are loyal to Donald Trump because he founded the order.

00:58:26.860 So, Donald Trump is somewhere in between.

00:58:29.160 He has not abolished the old modes and orders, but he has founded some new ones.

00:58:33.740 And he's more powerful in the new orders than he is in the old, as we would expect from what Machiavelli is saying here.

00:58:40.000 But if you want to take full power, you need to be able to crush all of it.

00:58:45.300 And this is what Curtis Yarvin talks about.

00:58:47.160 He says, look, the Trump administration simply has not been thorough enough in dismantling the system.

00:58:52.380 They became just another administration instead of becoming a whole new government.

00:58:56.740 What we needed was a whole new set of modes and orders.

00:58:59.960 And what we got was an attempt to kind of do some of those things, but also try to hold on to the old system.

00:59:05.700 But as we're going to see here, Machiavelli says that's the worst position to be in because you look just threatening enough for the old orders to try to truly crush you, truly destroy you.

00:59:19.940 But you're not dangerous enough to actually get rid of the old orders.

00:59:22.980 So you're just enough of a danger to draw the full power and the full destruction from the old system.

00:59:32.320 But you're not committed enough to destroy that old system, free yourself from its control, and create your own thing.

00:59:39.220 And that's the middle ground that is the worst to tread.

00:59:41.940 But we'll carry on with Machiavelli here in the next episode.

00:59:46.820 But trust me, that lesson only gets hammered home more and more as Machiavelli goes on.

00:59:54.020 All right.

00:59:55.260 Let's go to questions of the people who are real quick.

00:59:59.620 Joe McDermott says the difficulty of conquering the Turks because of their lack of connection to that nobility has frightening implications for a country like the U.S.

01:00:07.980 with uber mass migration speeds.

01:00:10.480 Man, brother, from you to God's ears.

01:00:14.500 That is so true.

01:00:18.800 Sir Blank says, please make this series a playlist on your channel.

01:00:22.560 Good news.

01:00:23.480 I have broken it into the Machiavelli playlist.

01:00:26.920 So I tend to create playlists for the different philosophers.

01:00:29.840 So it won't be its own separate, separate playlist.

01:00:32.500 But all of these episodes will be under Machiavelli.

01:00:35.160 So if you want to go and find them, you'll see them listed under that playlist.

01:00:38.980 It'll be very easy to find.

01:00:40.620 That way you can share it out or enjoy it that way.

01:00:43.340 But I'm glad you're listening to it.

01:00:45.240 I like to use playlists because I like to organize the thinkers that we're talking about.

01:00:49.700 It's kind of nice to be back to talking about political theory, to be honest.

01:00:54.020 The news of the day was getting pretty tiring.

01:00:55.780 So I'm very glad to be diving back into this.

01:00:58.780 And I'm glad you guys are enjoying it.

01:01:00.880 That definitely helps motivate me to do more and more of this content because it's not always the most algorithmically successful.

01:01:07.460 So knowing that the hardcore audience really loves and appreciates it and wants to have playlists of it and share it out and enjoy it means a lot to me.

01:01:15.480 So I appreciate it.

01:01:16.360 All right, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap this one up.

01:01:19.260 Thank you guys so much for your support.

01:01:21.340 If it is your first time on YouTube watching this, you need to click subscribe, the bell, notifications, all that stuff so you know when we're going live.

01:01:28.960 If you want to get these broadcast as podcasts, you need to subscribe to the Orr McIntyre show on your favorite podcast platform.

01:01:36.140 And if you do, please leave a rating or review.

01:01:38.180 It really helps with the algorithm magic.

01:01:40.040 Thank you, everybody, for watching.

01:01:41.120 And as always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - February 18, 2026

Machiavelli on Governing the Conquered ｜ 2⧸18⧸26

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