maybe Gonzales should have taken the ethics refresher

[Fresh_Start]

not that it would have taken but maybe he might not have perjured himself in front of Congress

[whistle]

1. It is only considered a refresher if you already had an ethics class

...there is no evidence that any BushCo nominee ever has taken such a class

<snip>
Niccolò Machiavelli

The Devil's Morals: Ethics in Machiavelli's The Prince
by Souvik Mukherjee

"Yet as I have said before, not to diverge from the good if he can avoid it, but to know how to set about it if compelled "

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) was an Italian statesman and political philosopher. He was employed on diplomatic missions as defence secretary of the Florentine republic, and was tortured when the Medici returned to power in 1512. When he retired from public life he wrote his most famous work, The Prince (1532), which describes the means by which a leader may gain and maintain power.

The Prince has had a long and chequered history and the number of controversies that it has generated is indeed surprising. Almost every ideology has tried to appropriate it for itself - as a result everyone from Clement VII to Mussolini has laid claim to it. Yet there were times when it was terribly unpopular. Its author was seen to be in league with the devil and the connection between 'Old Nick' and Niccolo Machiavelli was not seen as merely nominal. The Elizabethans conjured up the image of the 'murdering Machiavel' <1> and both the Protestants and the later Catholics held his book responsible for evil things. Any appraisal of the book therefore involved some ethical queasiness. Modern scholarship may have removed the stigma of devilry from Machiavelli, but it still seems uneasy as to his ethical position.

Croce <2> and some of his admirers like Sheldon Wolin <3> and Federic Chabod <4> have pointed out the existence of an ethics-politics dichotomy in Machiavelli. Isaiah Berlin <5> postulates a system of morality outside the Christian ethical schema. Ernst Cassirer <6> calls him a cold technical mind implying that his attitude to politics would not necessarily involve ethics. And Macaulay <7> sees him as a man of his time going by the actual ethical positions of Quattrocento Italy.

In the face of so many varied opinions, it would be best to re-examine the texts and the environment in which they were written. Let us get a few fundamental facts clear. Nowhere in The Prince or The Discourses does Machiavelli explicitly make morality or ethics his concern. Nor does he openly eschew it. Only one specific ethical system, the Christian ethic has no place in Machiavelli. That is easily inferred because from the very first pages a system based more on the power of arms than on Christian love is spoken of. Murder is condoned when necessary. Virtue and vice are not seen so much as black and white as interchangeable shades of grey. This does not however exclude the possibility of a separate ethical paradigm which Machiavelli might have thought of for his state. This is in accordance with Berlin's suggestion of a 'pagan' paradigm <8>. Morality per se, comes in only when The Prince deems it compatible with Necessitas and Fortuna <9>.The separate ethical paradigm must therefore be one founded on political necessities.

<MORE>

http://www.literature-study-online.com/essays/machiavelli.html

[Old and In the Way]

2. Maybe he should have remembered that AG of the DoJ works

for the American people, not POTUS. He had that job, big difference.

[dicknbush]

3. BYE BYE FREDO BYE BYE FREDO.......BYE BYE FREDO...

WE'LL LOVE TO SEE YOU GO!!!!!