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Show My own thing The Prince revisited BY ROGER EKJNS Machiavelli is alive and well in the White House! Perhaps most people have known this for some time now, but 1 never realized the gravity of the situation until Spiro T. Agnew's latest vocal eruption. In equating the moratorium peace efforts with "The mob," our vice president condemned even the most non-violent rallies and demonstrations as "negative in content" and "disruptive in effect." ef-fect." Certainly these statements can only serve to further alienate those who sincerely want immediate imme-diate peace in the world from the administration. "But how can Nixon let Agnew say things like that?" I have asked myself that question several times now and I only recently found the answer as I thumbed through Nic-colo Nic-colo Machiavelli's infamous handbook hand-book on political expediency, The Prince. For those unfamiliar with the work, the first line of the introduction in-troduction states that "traditionally, "tradition-ally, The Prince is a book inspired by the Devil." The first English translation appeared in 1640. Not intellectual President Nixon has often been accused of not being very intellectual, intellec-tual, but I am convinced that he has read at least one famous literary liter-ary work, The Prince. Why does he let Agnew say such antagonizing antagoniz-ing things? Machiavelli warns that "princes should delegate to others the enactment of unpopular measures mea-sures and keep in their own hands the distribution of favours." Could it be that Nixon, like Shakespeare's Duke in "Measure for Measure" has "on Angelo (Agnew) impos'd the office, Who may, in th' ambush of my name, strike home, And yet my nature never in the flight To do in slander?" slan-der?" Is it possible that our President Presi-dent has taken Machiavelli to heart and has Agnew do the dirty work while he distributes "favours" "fa-vours" like letters of appreciation to Frank Overfelt? In order to confirm my suspicions, I read on in The Prince in search of more modern day parallels. Following are only a few of the more obvious ob-vious ones: "Everyone realizes how praiseworthy praise-worthy it is for a prince to honour his word and to be straightforward straight-forward rather than crafty in his dealings; nonetheless contemporary contempo-rary experience shows that princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their word lightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, have overcome those abiding by honest principles." "When states newly acquired as I said have been accustomed to living freely under their own laws, there are three ways to hold them securely: first, by devastating them; next, by going and living there in person; thirdly, by letting them keep their own laws, exacting exact-ing tribute, and setting up an oligarchy olig-archy which will keep the state friendly to you. In the last case, the government will know that it cannot endure without the friend ship and power of the nri "eated it, and so i Cil tselfto maintain hi, S city used tofreedo easily ruled through zens, if you want 5 t, than in any other way '' Auxiliaries bring disaster "Auxiliaries, the other fc. kind of troops, are involi you call upon a powerful come to your defence an tance. Pope Julius didfc? recent past, when, having sad account given of by his mercenaries in the ; campaign, he turned to auxfe and arranged for FerdiJ' Spain to assist him with fc. and troops. In themselves, aj ary forces can prove useful ad. able, but for the oe who rf them in they are almost aW disaster. You are left in the kK if they are defeated, and in ft, power if they are victorious." ' I have presented these t,.. paragraphs without including e.-" tonal commentary on brok-Geneva brok-Geneva Conventions, U.S pj regimes, or U.S. involvement' another country's civil war. Sat the parallels are only too :, parent. It looks as though Muf velli has won another one. ife is truly a "Prince." The able fact that he is a "Prince Darkness" rather than a "Pi. of Peace" has brought need; death to thousands of innoce people and will probably bt death to thousands more in tfc months and years to come. |