What men and particularly rulers are praised and blamed for
- Now the controversy begins. Or something. We think the book has been pretty stinkin' controversial already, but Machiavelli tells us that the party has only just started.
- He makes a pretty underhanded slap at Plato's Republic and a ton of other books that at the time were giving impractical and morally idealistic recommendations to princes.
- That's dreamy pie-in-the-sky stuff. Machiavelli is all about cold hard reality. In Machiavelli's Real World, princes stop being polite, and start getting real. Princes can't be good all the time. That's real.
- Sure, Disney Princes can be awesome and perfect, since they spend most of their time rescuing multi-racial princesses, but real princes have to wage war and fight. Those are not nice-guy things.
- That's why nice guys are probably not going to make good rulers. The important thing is to look like you are a Disney Prince while doing all that not-so-nice guy stuff that you need to do in order to rule.