Book One, Part One: Discourses 1 through 32
Part 1 of a Series of 6 articles for OpEdNews
Over the last forty years public education has stopped teaching about the responsibilities required of citizens living in a republic. Voting has become a right that one can choose to exercise instead of a civic necessity and duty. The study of government has gone from the public school curriculum. One result of this is the low percentage of eligible voters under the age of fifty who vote.
The very divisive 2016 presidential election highlighted this problem with a decrease in the number of people voting. Machiavelli’s Discourses is an analysis of governance that gives insight into current national and world events. It is at once profound and disconcerting, and states principles that every citizen of a republic should understand in order to maintain their republic.