The Prince, 500 Years Later and He Is Still Right

Okay. So to preface this I want to start out by saying that I by no means care about politics. All i know about it is that our government and politicians can't do their job properly ( I.E. government shutdown). So in a response to this i have started to read a small little novel called The Prince. The Prince was written by Niccolò Machiavelli an Italian philosopher, gentleman, and political genius. It was written as a letter/essay/dissertation to his friends in the prominent Italian family, the Medici, on the current state of Italian politics. The Prince is divided into different chapters that address different topics such as how power is obtained and how government should be built so that it can be sustained. Currently, I am at the fifth chapter titled: In what mode cities or principates must be administered which before they were seized used to live by their own laws. This chapter covers what must happen once a prince conquers a state to be able to control those who were already under the rules and laws of another state. According to Machiavelli, they must either be colonized by the invaders, let the natives create their own puppet regime that they believe has control, or they must be extinguished because they will hold on to the old way. This seems rather drastic but it is rather true. Machiavelli makes a lot of points in The Prince that are archaic and sometimes rather sadistic but to this day they are still accurate. Personally, i think that politicians would be better and maybe be able to do something for once if they were all required to read The Prince before taking office. Of course this is just my opinion, and who cares about a seventeen year old's opinion about a broken government?