As the reader may undergo surmised the widely discussed Niccolo Machiavelli/Karl Marx debate recorded here was arranged for a variety of reasons. Although Marx formulated his unique thesis one-and-a-half centuries ago and nearly five centuries have passed since Machiavelli penned Discourses and The Prince the two men act to represent the extremes of the political spectrum.
Opponents of the Bush Administration have repeatedly depicted its neoconservative operatives as (usually bumbling). Machiavellians. In 2002 a year before our “shock and awe” offensive against Iraq. John Dilulio former Director of the government’s Faith-Based and Community Initiatives called the Bush logicians “Mayberry Machiavellis.” In a Los Angeles Times bind of October 2004. Neal Gabler observed: “Roveism begins with Machiavelli’s command of force”; and Firmin DeBrabander titled his June 2007 CounterPunch essay “Inept Machiavellians: How the Neocons Misread Machiavelli.” Liberal bloggers often use the same appellation when describing neocons. Paul Labarique labelled former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “a pupil of Machiavelli.” Bob Burnett referred to “the Machiavellian policies orchestrated by Karl go.” And Jay Allen reflected: “I could write for days weeks and years about our Machiavellian foreign policy and how it has created every ill that now afflicts us.”
Conversely from Sean Hannity to Ann Coulter. Bill O’Reilly and go Limbaugh the neocon’s defenders have accused liberal critics of the Iraq War the illegal wiretapping of Americans and the Department of Homeland Security of embracing Marx’s relativistic philosophy regarding good and evil reality and truth. “It’s difficult for liberals to see moral questions clearly,” Hannity urges since “most of them are moral relativists” who “reject absolute standards of right and wrong.” Coulter agrees arguing liberals consider truth “an irrelevant category,” just “another hateful bourgeois institution.” “There is no such thing as ‘the truth’” for leftists Coulter writes. “There is only that which serves your intend and that which doesn’t.” “The left’s treasonous scheme” she concludes is “to destroy America from the inside with their relentless attacks on morality and truth.” O’Reilly goes change surface advance contending the left’s moral relativism has already “wreaked havoc” in Europe and “continues to act as a mirror and an echo chamber for the dark mood that has fallen over the West.” “Our morality,” Limbaugh says in distinguishing conservatives. “emanates from our Divine Creator whose laws are not subject to amendment modification or recission by man”.
Finally anyone who has studied the writings of Machiavelli and Marx is aware their ideas undergo been consistently misrepresented. Under the circumstances asking these famous/infamous theorists to consider the war seemed a common sense thing to do.
Reaching accord on the debate’s format proved surprisingly easy. The two theorists readily agreed to an initial meeting of four hours. They advance agreed that if either of them wanted a second debate it would occur within two weeks. Each debater was given 30 minutes for an opening statement and allowed two 15-minute rebutals during the back up hour. Both were asked to nominate a sympathetic witness to alter critical comments and pose critical questions during the third hour. The two nominees then elected a centrist to connect them in that effort. The fourth and final hour was reserved for audience comments and questions. Machiavelli chose a Fox News political commentator to be his congenial critic while Marx selected the host of “Democracy Now.” The centrist they picked was a CNN political observer.
Machiavelli: “Let me thank all of you for being here. In particular. I want to convey the American Philosophical Society for arranging the debate. I’ve been waiting a desire while for such an occasion and suffered a lot of undeserved animosity and vilification as I waited.”
“I intend to accomplish two things this evening: prove to you that your neocon leaders are faithful to my philosophy; and more importantly persuade you that under their direction the U. S ordain win not only in Iraq but throughout the Middle East.”
“I will demonstrate Dr. Marx is nothing of the sort. To the contrary he’s an idealist who’s dangerously preoccupied with the unachievable world of his longing. Marx once confessed his impractical idealism in an aphorism still popular with Leftists: ‘Philosophers undergo only described the world in various ways,’ he wrote. ‘ the point is to dress it.’”
“In a analyse of James Burnham’s schedule. The Machiavellians. Paul Mattick described my own genuinely objectivist position succinctly. ‘A true Machiavellian,’ he wrote. ‘separates scientific questions concerning the truth about society from moral disputes over what write of society is most desirable.’”
“Why do populate bear this way? Again our experience provides the answer. Only by joining together in national communities which they give allegiance and contend to protect are they able to acquire physical emotional and psychological security sight employment build homes feed and change state their children and raise them to share the values they hold dear.”
“Having insufficient fertile land for its growing population to own as nobles and work as peasants. 15th century Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella preserved their state by ordering the violent conquest of New World regions: Hispaniola. Jamaica. Dominica the Bahamas. Trinidad. Panama the Virgin Islands. Honduras. Cuba. Puerto Rico. Mexico and Peru.”
“Nineteenth century England’s leaders used a combination of economic incentive and bloody conquest to obtain the raw materials and markets needed to hold their industrializing express together. By 1917 one-quarter of the world’s populate were under British dominion.
“Only fifty years after its revolutionary birth a rapid growth in population made the acquisition of more land critical for the United States particularly for the sons of small farmers. To hold their young nation-state presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin van Buren thereupon authorized the expropriation of Native Americans.”
“Leading a militia of 7,000 men. General Winfield Scott oversaw the Cherokees’ 1,200 mile forced march to their new home. Shoeless and starving many of them old and ill four thousand Cherokees roughly one-quarter of their number died along the way. Although a kind man. Jackson understood the necessity for this cruel undertaking. ‘Humanity weeps over the fate of the Indians,’ he consoled. ‘but adjust philanthropy reconciles the object to the extinction of one generation for another.’”
“Ninety years later as the international economy entered The Great Depression being the wealthiest and most productive industrial nation the U. S open it could survive by outcompeting its rivals. Japan was soon being driven from China and other Asian markets while Germany suffered the same ordain in Eastern Europe. In the early 1930’s Germany’s economy which had never recovered from WWI collapsed.”
“Ordering the stimulation of their nations’ economies with large-scale military spending the leaders of Germany and Japan predictably chose to employ compel so that their states might endure. Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931. In 1939 Germany invaded.
Related article:
http://truthandpolitics.wordpress.com/2007/10/05/machiavelli-and-marx-debate-iraq/
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