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Niccolo Machiavelli - the basis of liberty

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Italian philosopher and politician Niccolo Machiavelli describing the basis of liberty as checks and balances of power. He rebukes those who negatively see people with political disagreements arguing as a bad thing, as it seems clear that he sees such dialogue however rancorous as having the potential to reach compromises deemed sufficient to the nobility and the common people of a society, and that this would be preferable to violent unrest between them as has been frequent in history. Machiavelli is known for having been a political realist, a proponent of power politics, and a republican.

Machiavelli has received a reputation for being a ruthless amoral pragmatist because of statements in his work The Prince, a small concise book that describes the full range of forms of governance and how to govern including how to attain and maintain power and how to deceive enemies; and saying that people are driven above all by self-interest and greed. The Prince has been seen by historians as having been written by Machiavelli to gain the favour of the of the Medici family to allow him to return to public office, as he had dedicated the work to Lorenzo II de Medici as well as the fact that he had been deprived of public office in 1512 upon the Medici seizing power in Florence. However Machiavelli's much longer and comprehensive work Discourses on Livy is often ignored, but it clearly emphasizes that Machiavelli was a republican by nature who admired the political basis of the Roman Republic. In societies that had a monarchy he believed it should ideally be modeled as close as possible to a republic that would make it effective if it seeks the consent of its population to be truly legitimate and to avoid civil unrest erupting.

He used ancient Rome as a model showing political accommodation of the nobility and the common people through assemblies to represent both their interests that required the consent of both assemblies to pass legislation, and a monarchical component with heads of state held by the two Consols of the Roman Republic and later by the Emperor during the Roman Empire. The famous Roman acronym SPQR used frequently in Rome as a symbol of Rome itself meant: Senātus Populus que Rōmānus, "The Senate and the People of Rome" referring to the society being based upon the consent of the Roman Senate representing the nobility and the popular assemblies representing the common people especially the assembly called the Tribune of the Plebs.

This should be kept in mind by those living in societies with representative governments that contrary to allegations of Machiavelli as being a through-and-through amoral opportunist with no true allegiances, that he actually did have deep convictions to maximizing a form of government where liberty would be preserved through not allowing unrest to erupt because of the power of either the nobility or common people going ahead of the other. Many national legislatures in the world today are modeled in some way on the Roman model with an upper house originally designed to represent nobility and a lower house designed to represent the common people. The United States in particular has a very strong emphasis on the idea of checks and balances that Machiavelli alludes to that is entrenched as a fundamental principle of the country's political system.

Note: I have posted this quote because it is a quote of an important historical figure. This is not posted here to encourage anyone to take a political stance based on the content in this. I advise anyone who finds a quote of someone interesting on a political level to do their own research through reliable sources on the person's beliefs, associations, and history before considering making any major statements of praise or condemnation of them as a whole aside from what elements you may agree with in the quote. If people choose to support or use this image for political reasons, that is their decision and responsibility, not mine. With these points in mind, I will accept this image being included in any group interested in having this image.
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Hillfighter's avatar
The Roman republic was quite a government. In many ways it borrowed elements of Greek government from various city-states, but in others it was unique. Livy mentioned the class conflicts where the plebs essentially went on strike multiple times, rallying in the Temple of Ceres the goddess of the harvest, and created their own government structures. The curious aspect is that their Tribune's main power was the veto, the right to nullify legislation passed by the Senate, which had to be shouted from outside the building. It took more strikes for the Senate to take the veto seriously.

It should probably be stated that in many ways the Roman republic as a form of government is a byproduct of military necessity. Voting for senate offices was conducted as part of one's military unit while arrayed on the Field of Mars.

I think one last point is that almost every aspect of western government is influenced by the Romans in some very profound way. When Machiavelli states that the Roman people are the very origin of liberty, he is correct twice over. First, through the Roman god Liber whose very name has lent weight to the idea of freedom and again through the plebs whose actions secured that freedom.