I think that Machiavelli’s
statement about men and rivers is true. In my opinion, he is stating that men
can be ruled by others and be controlled but if you give those men too much
freedom/independence, the control will be lost along with trust. His position
on how a leader should act is far from how the royal family acts today but back
then I think it was pretty accurate. A prince shouldn’t care if people call him
a miser as long as he acting for the overall good of the people. Everyone does
things that they regret but in the long run all of those little mishaps create
the big picture of who you are and what you accomplished. Prince Harry has had
many things go wrong for him, but do we consider him to be a bad person? No,
because the amount of positive impacts he has made greatly outweighs the
negatives. Similarly, in “The Prince” Machiavelli states “it’s much wiser to
put up with the reputation of being a miser, which brings you shame without
hate, than to be forced- just because you want to appear generous.”
(Machiavelli 224) He is explaining that you don’t want to be considered a fake
by being the nice guy all the time but you should care about the big picture
even if there are some negatives.
http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-rulers-today-follow-niccolo-machiavellis-the-prince-is-it-better-for-a-ruler-to-be-feared-or-loved
I totally agree with your opinion that Machiavelli's statement about rivers and men. I also really like your statement that talks about how even though Prince Harry has messed up in the past, his positive impacts have outweighed the negatives; and how it connects to "The Prince". Good job
ReplyDeleteI like your specific example of Prince Harry, next time you could put even more specific things he's done (politically or within his family). I really like how succinct this blog is, you say a lot in very few words... You did really well with this!
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