The Great Goal of Statecraft Is Long Duration

"The great goal of statecraft should be duration, which outweighs everything else," says machiavelli. "When he has thus come to experience pain and distress, something new and noble can be inoculated into the injured places." He adds that long duration is a steady evolution and ennobling inoculation at all possible. The strong societies are ones where there is some kind of consensus around what we're doing,. And that consensus is not one that's discussed - it's actually undiscussable.