[Jacquerie]

Full title: Cato's Letter No. 115, The Encroaching Nature of Power, Ever to be Watched and Checked.

[JimSEA]

“It is the nature of power to be ever encroaching, and converting every extraordinary power, granted at particular times, and upon particular occasions, into an ordinary power, to be used at all times, and when there is no occasion; nor does it ever part willingly with any advantage. From this spirit it is, that occasional commissions have grown sometimes perpetual; that three years have been improved into seven, and one into twenty; and that when the people have done with their magistrates, their magistrates will not have done with the people.”

We are clearly at or beyond this point and we seem to lack the stubbornness of Cato the Younger. In spite of all opposition, Caesar was triumphant and the power of the Emperors never again was checked.

[Hiddigeigei]

Books were expensive. To have a home library was a mark of wealth and assumed wisdom. Still, most families had at least one book...

de Toqueville visited a rustic cabin in the forest:

"... on the right hand of the chimney a map of the United States, raised and shaken by the wind through the crannies in the wall; near the map, upon a shelf formed of a roughly hewn plank, a few volumes of books—a Bible, the six first books of Milton, and two of Shakespeare's plays; along the wall, trunks instead of closets;..."

Democracy In America, Volume 2, by Alexis de Toqueville

[zeugma]

The real question is: “Why do even most college graduates not know who John Locke is, or what he wrote?”