Machiavelli’s succinct and semi-diabolical advice to the prince is one of the most enduring works of political philosophy in the world.  This man, writing in a time roughly contemporaneous with the Reformation, was less concerned with seeking the will of God than with winning at all costs.  I wrote about him in my book The End of Secularism.

He is famous for advising the prince that it is important to appear honest, humane, religious, faithful, and charitable, but that it is equally important the prince be ready to abandon any of those attributes when opportunity presents itself.  The prince should not worry about whether he will gain a bad reputation for deception, because, as Machiavelli suggests, there are always ordinary people willing to be deceived and the world is FULL of ordinary people.

The primary thrust of the book is advice about how to gain principalities and to maintain control of them.  Many things work to a prince’s advantage, such as traditions of servitude and customs that reinforce the reign of a prince.  But there is one thing that puts sand in the princely engine and grinds things to a halt.  That thing is a tradition of liberty.  If a people are accustomed to liberty, Machiavelli writes, then they will never stop trying to regain it.  Even if they haven’t had it for a hundred years, the ancestral memory of liberty will be overpoweringly strong.  It may be so strong that no manipulative device of the prince will be able to defeat it and he may have no other option than to destroy such a city.

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This year has seen a surge in conservative activism like I’ve never seen in my adult life. Many of you here at Redstate have been a part of that. We’ve been to tea parties. We’ve donated money to candidates and to causes. We’ve spoken up at the town hall meetings. We gathered in Atlanta. We emailed and called capitol hill. We acted.

Next week, for many people, the activity, the protests, and the activism will reach a peak. The President is speaking to schools, and the people are speaking back. We’ll be keeping our children home. We’ll be marching on Washington. And we’ll be rallying around the country throughout the week.

I plan to be a part of the activism next week. I’ll be at one of the biggest planned rallies outside DC, in Salt Lake City, Utah. We’ll follow the march, meeting fellow activist conservatives and, most importantly, participate in training and discussion about what’s next for conservatives who want to be active in our movement. Please read on …

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No kidding. The feds want “all baby boys born in the United States” circumcised.

Experts are also considering whether the surgery should be offered to adult heterosexual men whose sexual practices put them at high risk of infection. But they acknowledge that a circumcision drive in the United States would be unlikely to have a drastic impact: the procedure does not seem to protect those at greatest risk here, men who have sex with men.

Recently, studies showed that in African countries hit hard by AIDS, men who were circumcised reduced their infection risk by half. But the clinical trials in Africa focused on heterosexual men who are at risk of getting H.I.V. from infected female partners.

Health wise, it does make sense for more than just HIV/AIDS. I’ve always found the groups out there who feel somehow abused because mom and dad circumcised them to be very bizarre. Andrew Sullivan calls it “male genital mutilation.” Sullivan is against parents doing the God ordained act. Sullivan has HIV, by the way, and I don’t know whether he is or is not . . . let’s just not go there.

In any event, this got me thinking about Obamacare. The government already denies children access to schooling if the children do not have certain vaccines. If we are all on government healthcare — an eventuality if the Democrats have anything to do about it — think about what else they can do to us.

The government could conceivably deny you health coverage unless you alter your diet to fit the whim of a bureaucrat. The government could refuse to pay for your hip replacement if you don’t stop smoking or drinking. The government can do whatever the government wants once you are enslaved to it.

Just look at how the government manipulates individual actions via the tax code. Now add to that mandatory health insurance run by the government.

This isn’t just about saving money and having choices. This is about liberty.

With the first days of Summer a long standing American tradition emerges anew from yards and garages all across the country. Once again this season we will see the venerable American garage sale bloom everywhere. Homeowners will be seen busily setting up folding tables or bringing picnic tables from back yards to load them up with used clothes, toys, collectibles, and items of all sorts. Couples will once again cruise the neighborhood looking to those bargains. It’s as American as Baseball, and the rest.

But a new player has been introduced to the venerable garage sale scheme and this one isn’t looking for a deal. It is a new player that isn’t looking to ask you “how much” but is looking to tell you what you’ll be allowed to sell. It’s the federal government and it’s iron boot heel come a’calling at your local garage sale.

That’s right, folks, the federal government is here to warn you that you will no longer be allowed to sell certain things at your garage or yard sales or even on auction sites like ebay. If you are a scofflaw, Big Brother is here to stomp you. The nanny state is here to “protect” you. And you better watch out or there’s no telling what just might happen to you if you don’t bow down to the all powerful state.

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According to a new study released by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, some of our most liberal states rank at the bottom in a measure of personal freedom. “Freedom in the 50 States, an index of personal and economic freedom,” finds the most free states to be first New Hampshire, then Colorado, followed by S. Dakota, Idaho, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, Arizona, Virginia and N. Dakota.The bottom ten least free states in the U.S. are (in descending order) Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Washington, Hawaii, Maryland, California, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and bringing up the bottom is New York.

It is striking that some of the most Republican states are the most free and all the least free are Democrat states, isn’t it? (2008 Election Map)

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So the liberals and their media allies have taken to calling the Tea Parties ‘teabagging’ in an obvious attempt at innuendo.

Well, cool. What, did any of you expect to get asked why people are out marching today? Did anyone really expect an honest inquiry as to why so many folks are upset? Uhhh, no. Wasn’t ever going to happen. The same people who can’t debate in the arena of ideas weren’t suddenly going to change (har).

But it’s all good, and here’s why.

Like all liberals and democrats, they’ve overplayed their hand. Not a small feat when you consider that the Chicago machine has been in office for less than 3 months. They’ve pointed up and yelled “SCOREBOARD!” and assumed that the Bush hatred they fueled over the last 8 years meant that the vast majority of the people suddenly decided to view the world through the same prism that they do.

For me personally, I like my libs overconfident. Lazy. Stupid. Let them continue to live in the bubble they’ve concocted for themselves, the one that says that millions of Americans suddenly want their version of government. Don’t be discouraged when they dismiss you, call you crazy, a traitor, whatever. And resist the urge to say, “Better a tea bag than a d-bag” *looks knowingly at the other side*

After all, that’s their tactics. It’s who they are. They’re not here to exchange ideas. They’re here to tell you your ideas are the stupidest ones on Earth and that you have no right to object to anything they have to say. They’re here to reach into your life and tell you how to live it.

But what they fail to recognize is that today wasn’t something Rush Limbaugh cooked up. It wasn’t something that John McCain or Sarah Palin put together. It wasn’t even something that the Republican party organized. Nope, today was what America is all about: a bunch of people deciding to make their voices heard. Oh, some lib troll may try and claim that we tried to deny them their right to protest the Iraq war, but that’s a dishonest change of subject.

Today was about the folks sending a message. There are more of these parties coming. And let Janet Napolitano label everybody who went to these things as some kind of whacko. In this day and age, as much as looks like the libs control the message, the people can still read the charts and access the legislation. They know what’s going on.

And they know who’s doing it. Let’s build on today. Keep the momentum going. Start by not engaging the name-calling haters. Just nod and smile and get to work perfecting our ideas. And when 2010 rolls around, get out there and get people to pull the lever the right way.

Hopefully, the lazy/overconfident/stupid among the other side will wake up with one heck of a hangover. And with some elbow grease, Pelosi and Reid will have a heck a lot of problems to deal with in Congress.

Let’s do this.

Promoted by Brian Faughnan

Few books come along that I actually believe everyone should read. There simply are not that many good books in the world today, much less ones that most people could possibly get something out of. But, our friend Mark Levin has written such a book – and I recommend that we conservatives should either give, or promote, the book to literally everyone we know.

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto manages to take a number of complex legal, historical, and philosophical concepts and distill them into a well-constructed but easy-to-read snapshot of our current state of affairs. That is not an easy thing to do.

We live in a strange time. As Mark points out in his book, “[s]o distant is America today from its founding principles that it is difficult to precisely describe the nature of American government.” He notes that we are hardly a constitutional republic, federalist republic and/or representative republic – rather, we are instead a “society steadily transitioning toward statism.”

Indeed, “Statist” is the term he uses artfully to more accurately define the Modern Liberal as one who “believes in the supremacy of the state.” This concept is a constant theme throughout his book – and offers an important and necessary shift in thinking for conservatives toward a firm recognition that those who oppose us are committed to the state rather than liberty.

In the closing of his introductory chapter, Mark points out the following:

The Conservative is alarmed by the ascent of a soft tyranny and its cheery acceptance by the neo-Statist. He knows that liberty once lost is rarely recovered. He knows of the decline and eventual failure of past republics. And he knows that the best prescription for addressing society’s real and perceived ailments to is not to further empower an already enormous federal government beyond its constitutional limits, but to return to the founding principles. A free people living in a civil society, working in self-interested cooperation, and a government operating within the limits of its authority promote more opportunity, prosperity and opportunity than any alternative. Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny because its principles are the founding principles.

Well said – and instructive during a time when Republicans, as we’ve discussed before, need to get back to basics and stand for something meaningful – something beyond thoughtless, supposedly politically-expedient efforts to buy votes and to “appeal” to certain demographics.

Getting back into power is not reason enough to stand on our basic conservative principles even though it may be the result. We need more than power-seeking – we need to stand on principle to fight the Statist… to inspire new generations of Americans to look to themselves rather than the State for progress… and to band together in the most noble of earthly causes - to preserve and protect liberty against tyranny. Thanks, Mark. Well done.