Getting back to the topic...

I began thinking about this as I drove home listening to NPR after work yesterday. The conversation was about Machiavelli's "The Prince".

From their transcript:

"But Machiavelli was not simply a political writer. Italian studies Professor Albert Ascoli describes him as a skilled literary stylist who deliberately courted controversy.

Machiavelli used irony and sarcasm, but Ascoli says he was aware "that virtually every precept that he gives — or many of them — are going to be understood to be comic inversions of the accepted wisdom about things."

As an example, Ascoli points to this passage:

This raises the question whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the contrary. My reply is that one would like to be both; but it is difficult to combine love and fear. If one has to choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

Machiavelli's The Prince was written in a time of political upheaval. He used direct language and dry humor to address the problems one could expect when setting out to overthrow an existing state."