Talk politics.

In the course of my life I have engaged in two major discussions with people who have completely misunderstood Machiavelli, in both cases thinking that he argues for the acquisition of power for its own sake in politics. To be fair, one of these people was an idiot sandwich, who would go on to win the aus.politics Net Kook of the Year award, apparently revived just for their benefit. But the other, more recent, was far more disappointing. With a doctorate in the natural sciences and an interest in ensuring public policy was better informed by scientific knowledge, one cannot doubt the honour of their motives. But what was common between both was in astounding inability that they had completely misunderstood Machiavelli, misunderstood his book on the power-hungry, "The Prince", and misunderstood how social institutions are positive and normative. Misunderstandings, of course, are acceptable if one makes the effort to correct one's self. Our interpretations may be incorrect, or memories might be faulty. But also in common with the two encounters was their absolute refusal to admit error, even when direct, checkable, empirical evidence was provided. It is understandable that the idiot sandwich would do this. It is utterly tragic that the otherwise intelligent person would lack the humility to recognise when they have it wrong. In either case, the following is a few notes on how Machiavelli is misunderstood, and how honour can be restored to his name.

If one wants to reference "The Prince" itself, a multitude of editions are available online. Project Gutenberg has the Marriot edition, the first modern English translation. Wikisource offers the Hill Thomson translation. The Bennet translation is available on Early Modern texts, the Burd translation, with an introduction by Lord Acton via the Online Library of Liberty (Mises Institute), IULM University has the Parks translation, Monoskop has the Soares edition, in Italian, and there is the ever-useful Annotated Prince website.

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