The Realist’s View of Morality Machiavelli’s most disturbing claim is that consistent goodness in political life is not just ineffective but suicidal. The prince who governs according to conventional moral principles will be destroyed by those willing to violate those principles. This is not because evil is more powerful than good in some cosmic sense but because politics operates in conditions where unilateral virtue is exploitable weakness. When your enemies are willing to lie, betray, and murder while you constrain yourself to honesty, loyalty, and mercy, they gain decisive advantages. Your goodness becomes the instrument of your destruction. This claim...