Goverment: Machiavelli vs. Lao Tzu

Machiavelli, once a failed politician, believe and wrote through one of his works, the Prince, that the main purpose of a politician is to protect the honor of the state from internal and external threats. Doing this, he will need to be able to keep his own people in line, but although being nice may work for a little while, the ruler should air on the side of ruthlessness, for this is what keeps people in line. The people should not find it easy to do what they want, but the prince shouldn't be so ruthless that it disgusts the very people he's serving. He needs to be seen as extremely strict, but also reasonable. Machiavelli argues that a prince should make good use of the term virtue, which would involve wisdom, strategy, strength, bravery, and in some cases, ruthlessness. Machiavelli describes this as something like "criminal virtue", which allows the politicians to be cruel in the name of the state. This doesn't mean that they can be cruel whenever they please. Any act of ruthlessness must be strictly necessary for the name of the state, mostly at night, and repeated too often, as to not anger the people. Now though this may not seem modern, you can kind of see how this can relate to our current society.

Lao Tzu, once a record keeper road along the country and, even though he was disguised as a farmer, a border official recognized him and asked him to write down his wisdom. What he wrote that day became the sacred text known as the Tao Te Ching. Lao Tzu was the leading spiritual leader in Daoism, and though it is an old practice,  it is still popular today in modern China. Lao looks at the current despair in the world and sees an underlining harmony guided by something known as the Dao, or path. As the Tao Te Ching describes it, it's the way of the world, and how to achieve virtue, happiness, and honor. The Dao isn't an inherently difficult thing to follow, though we need to go beyond simply just reading and thinking about the Dao and focus on the Wu Wei, known as flowing or effortless action. It can be described as living in acceptance of the Dao and living in harmony with it. Through what I've seen through a video I watched about him, and what I've currently talked about, I can guess that his view that the government should flow with the society. The government shouldn't force or rush the path of their people, for everything will be done in due through passive and swift actions. Though they should not be too aggressive, they should rely on persuasion to see that things get done, and have the society work as a whole to keep everything running.