A Classic Lesson from "The Prince"

Friends of mine often swear they’ve never seen anybody use the dog park in Oak Hill. Well, anybody who does, they likely have to drive. My objection that amenities should be centrally located, equally accessible, not in richest neighborhood was poo-pooed. That set me to considering Cascade’s ethics, and I concluded I that after a dozen years or more of going to Council meetings, that this town was not just corrupt, it was concertedly, committedly so. Ethical ideas count for nothing. I began entertaining the notion of moving, but friends elsewhere assured me it was “No different here.” “Same everywhere!” Concurrently, the proposal to put pickleball courts in Oak Hill was being discussed. I begged Dale Mescher and Terry Frasher, not to put an amenity in the toniest neighborhood in town. Everybody knows that by agreeing to accept a piece of property from a developer, Mike Beck or any other, we are also aiding and abetting tax malfeasance. The property (likely overvalued—so much limestone beneath the top layer, they couldn’t dig a basement) used to lessen the developer’s tax liability. Pretty hypocritical for a city, which exists on tax dollars, huh? Mind you, I was not the only one against the pickleball courts on Oak Hill. A couple other, older wiser types were as well. Now the ones in the community park sit chipping and cracking, and I am betting for the few tennis players there are, the city won’t have the money to repair them. The single objection the promoters of the Oak Hill pickleball courts—the ground was soggy—is still true for the tennis courts. I just quit going to council meetings. My first week in Florida, in my sister's local Library, I found the most spectacular copy of The Prince by Niccoli Machiavelli. The cover is bright yellow with bronze embossing; the pages are glossy and heavy as magazine covers; the illustrations are reproductions of medieval paintings of Renaissance leaders—the Medici, Sforzas, and the Kings of France. I checked it out just to marvel at it. Only I began reading it and found this fabulous quote: “…men are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly and covetous, and as long as you succeed, they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children…” Reading this classic from the 15th Century, I saw clearly that I had expected a sense of justice, concern for the environment and the larger society. However, the human race is mostly duplicitous, greed and self-serving. My own fault: I wouldn’t have expected anything else if I’d read The Prince years ago. Read the classics and save yourself a lot of grief and time: a fabulous waste expecting moral behavior from our leaders.