Mr. Bobbitt deserves different and far more expansive opportunity to present both his explication of Machiavelli and his analysis of our current world. I do look forward to learning more.

I admire Machiavelli. He is a very practical person. 20:44

outstanding talk. best I've heard on machiavelli.

Very few people from 500 years ago are still famous. I wonder what he would think if he could have known that he would become such an important academic figure today.

Machiavelli knew the Midci's and was not naive. Writing a book that was contrary to how the Midici ruled Florence for decades wasn't the way to get a job. He was tortured by the Midici's. According to wikipedia he had his hands tied behind his back and then with a rope tied to his bound wrists, was lifted off of the floor. I've read about this method of torture before. It dislocates a persons shoulders. I couldn't imagine seeking a job from anybody after they hung me by my wrists from the ceiling and just as unlikely, that the Midici's would trust somebody after they had them tortured. Regardless of the book 's introduction/dedication, the last chapter has to be directed towards a potential future prince. There is no way somebody that was as astute as he was and spoke as bluntly as he did, with the character he had to have had, would be begging Midici for a job.

dude keeps bringing up shield of achilles. has he not read terror & consent?

Mr Bobbitt is cute

Have

46:00 -- really disappointed and surprised that Bobbitt has such an ignorant opinion here on the NSA's collection and processing of data. Yes, private corporations have even more of our data -- but that is a red herring thrown out by Bobbitt. The NSA's capacity doesn't end with their metadata collection, but in fact includes ALL of those private databases at corporations. This was shown by Snowden's whistleblowing and the reporting by Glenn Greenwald to be essentially like the NSA having a backdoor to all the major internet firms from Facebook to Google to Yahoo to Microsoft. Trying to talk down the power and abuses of the NSA by limiting the established facts to "metadata collection" belies the true enormity of their reach and capabilities that include and thus dwarf the private corporations.

The smugness of modern man is sad.