Gary Machiavelli
ANTON, MICHAEL
Books Gary Machiavelli By Michael Anton Gary Hart is not a politician; he just played one in the United States Senate. He is, he wants us to know, a patriot-an enlightened leader of his people...
...His case against materialism is not much more than warmed-over Progressive-era populism...
...Hart's national interest includes such traditional considerations as keeping borders secure, streets safe from violence, the economy healthy, and citizens well educated...
...Well, those four dots take the place of a goodly chunk of text that Hart would rather not see the light of day, at least not in the pages of his own book...
...How many times does one need to read that, in the post-Cold-War era, America must redefine her foreign policy objectives...
...This book simply does not need 26 chapters, or even half that many, for the simple reason that Hart does not have much to say and so repeats himself endlessly...
...But the most important-and obvious-parallel is that The Patriot has exactly the same number of chapters-26-as The Prince, a common trick, well known to and practiced by Machiavelli himself (his Discourses on Livy has the same number of chapters as there are books in Livy's History of Rome) and by Machiavelli's own modern interpreter Leo Strauss (Strauss's essay on The Prince has 26 paragraphs...
...Michael Anton studies philosophy at the Claremont Graduate School...
...But one comes to the conclusion about halfway through The Patriot that Hart ought to have resisted this particular emulation...
...There is the title: In this democratic age, Hart thinks the altruistic patriot should replace the base and self-serving prince...
...He is, he wants us to know, a patriot-an enlightened leader of his people who loves the common good (or, as he likes to put it, the "national interest") more than his own interest and who wishes, above all, to effect a restoration of America's greatness in the face of a tidal wave of barbarism...
...In his opening epistle, Hart describes the "national interest...
...Each of the 26 chapters begins with a quotation from Machiavelli, often tortured out of context or altered to fit Hart's own purposes...
...Before a chapter entitled "Concerning the limitations on influencing other states," Hart quotes a Machiavellian metaphor: "It is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to frighten the wolves...
...He who has known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best...
...that since men are wicked this path is perfectly justified...
...indeed, the publisher's blurb announces confidently, "If Machiavelli had been an idealist, this is the book he would have written...
...Two fears turn out to dominate Hart's thinking and thus the book: overweening materialism in the hearts of both the populace and its leaders...
...Where the interests of this nation are concerned, The Patriot will yield no positive results, but at least (unlike the great and dangerous work it copies in so illiterate a fashion) it won't have any frightening real-world consequences...
...Hart makes an effort to mimic the form, if not the spirit, of the most famous work by his Florentine "mentor...
...It is difficult to imagine a statement more antithetical to the spirit of Machiavelli, history's most influential intellectual opponent of idealism in any form...
...Hart presents the thing as a modern update of Niccol...
...But it also features a "robust and vigorous environment," the "security" of the elderly, care for the poor (defined pretty much as current welfare policy), keeping citizens healthy (Health Security, anyone...
...The Patriot (Free Press, 187 pages, $21.00) is a hilarious piece of work-not that he meant it that way...
...The temptation when reading The Patriot is to excuse its frequent vapidity on the grounds that Hart means well...
...Indeed, one gets the impression that, just as Machiavelli's Prince was meant to be (and became) the manifesto for the thoroughly modern ruler, so Hart's book is intended to be nothing less than the manifesto for that new class of political figure described some months ago in these pages by David Brooks- the Beyondists, those who seek to live outside the narrow partisan boundaries of left and right, but who end up tacking to the left by default...
...and "productive" (through job training), not to mention "prudent investment in the common good," "wise and just government," and "ethnic and racial tranquillity...
...It is telling that, unlike Machiavelli, Hart makes the fictive claim that his tome has been requested of him by the dedicatee...
...Not very idealistic...
...He is on firm ground when he inveighs against the fraying of the American cultural fabric-this is the most imminent threat against the country, and Hart urges the new leader to confront it above all else...
...Hart too uses this device, but for a different end, namely to make Machiavelli's thought conform, as much as possible, to his own idealism...
...Hart never bothers to articulate exactly what America should be, other than that it should not be what it has degenerated into-a position with which almost everyone, left or right, will no doubt agree wholeheartedly...
...But as for concrete solutions, he has none...
...He does not say around what...
...he merely proposes that we again "unite...
...and American disunity...
...Hart's is a self-serving and long-winded rant in which he exhorts an unnamed (and, one assumes, fictitious) "leader" to take up the banner that Hart himself was forced- by the media, by the cruel realities of politics, and (to some small extent) by his own failings-to abandon...
...There is also a dedicatory letter, comparable to Machiavelli's astoundingly, cynically obsequious dedication to Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of Florence...
...But as Hart himself says, "Where the interests of a nation are concerned, intentions are secondary to results...
...this may help explain the supreme confidence, bordering on arrogance, that pervades The Patriot...
...and that a prince will never have trouble coming up with an excuse to "color" his lack of faith...
...This is where a good chunk of the hilarity originates, for Hart recoils in horror from what Machiavelli actually says and takes it upon himself to sanitize Machiavelli in a manner and to an extent that would sober even those who defend Machiavelli against Strauss's charge that he was a teacher of evil...
...and like Machiavelli, he defines the term in such a way as to drain it of any meaning...
...His definition of "the patriot" can be gleaned from his new book of the same name, in which he lays out a political philosophy meant to guide a new generation of American "leaders" through a most confusing and unpleasant age...
...That one of Machiavelli's favorite devices is to deliberately misquote authors or use stories and anecdotes out of context in order to communicate a subtle point best left, as it were, unsaid, has been well established by Strauss and, more recently, by Harvey Mansfield (whose new book Machiavelli's Virtue ought to be read by anyone interested in understanding the real Machiavelli...
...Machiavelli's The Prince...
...For in the sentences that intercede, Machiavelli points out that cleverness is essentially indistinguishable from dishonesty...
...If Machiavelli had been an idealist...
...that a prudent prince both cannot and should not observe faith when such observance turns against him...
...If Machiavelli had been an idealist, he would not have been Machiavelli, wallower in harsh realities...
Vol. 1 • May 1996 • No. 36
