Holocaust, Militarism and Machiavelli's Advice: How Fear Took Over Israel | Haaretz - Jan. 1, 2021 |

Israel may be the best-defended state in the world, but its people's existence is based on an ethos of constant fear.

In his famous handbook for rulers, dedicated to Lorenzo di Medici, Niccolò Machiavelli advised his eponymous prince to learn how to elicit both love and fear in his subjects. Being loved and feared at the same time was the best way to exercise power, but if you have to choose between them, Macchiaveli admonished, better to be feared, for fear of the prince will protect him and maintain social order (on condition that the prince is not cruel). Fear (instilled in others) is undoubtedly the emotion most relished by tyrants, with most, if not all, using it to build up their regimes.

Gun violence and the state of fear in the United States of America ... a perpetual movement of a Conservative society ... should not be the ideals of democracy.

'Sapere aude'