[davesims]

> (Machiavelli's teachings) are not fit to be quoted in a discussion of how to conduct a democracy.

Sorry, I should have qualified that, because I wasn't endorsing Machiavelli, only acknowledging his influence on our current context.

You're right about the violent times of The Prince. You're wrong about two things: the notion that it is removed at all from our contemporary environment (such brutality has not been surpassed in extremis in the last century alone? Please...), and the idea that the fundamental turn from the idealism of Plato and the ancients to the pragmatism of the moderns was not prefigured and in fact architected by Machiavelli. The philosophies of Real Politic and Neo-Conservatism (at least) are fundamentally Straussian/Machiavellian in origin.

All I can say about the rest of your points regarding the mentally ill is, I wish mental health was the world's biggest problem as you seem to think it is. But in this discussion it's a complete non sequitur.