While researching an unrelated subject, what I would have thought of as completely unrelated even, a most serendipitous passage stopped my eyes in their tracks sockets. How could these words appear:
It feels of great import. So much that it has inspired me to share in this, only my second diary, and the first of any length. In addition to the statement itself knocking the breath out of me, which admittedly is not difficult since I currently have a cold or COVID, or both, the experience double-underlined why certain factions despise literacy, shared knowledge, and action based in knowledge. Sir Francis Bacon wrote, in Meditationes Sacrae (1597) ‘Of Heresies’: Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientia_potentia_est
For also knowledge itself is power.
My eternal gratitude to the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/, for making this moment of serendipity possible. So here it is, from substantially closer to the writing and adoption of:
The Constitution of the United States of America
v.
23-939 Trump v. United States (07/01/2024)
In the chapter ‘Officers of Our National Government’, of Treasures of use and beauty : an epitome of the choicest gems of wisdom, history, reference & recreation, https://archive.org/details/treasuresuseand01mackgoog/page/32/mode/2up
written by Mrs. G. W. Mack in 1883, pp.32-33:
THE EXECUTIVE. It is sometimes said that the President of the United States is a king except in name. The office of an executive is the same, whether he be called king or some other name. It is true that the vast patronage and responsibility of the President, and the influence that their exercise secures to him, gives him much more power of a certain kind than many kings possess. But here the analogy ceases. The sentiment, the servility, that attach to kingship, are wanting. The exercise of irresponsible power that is one of the prerogatives of kingship, is wanting. The monarchial fiction that “the king can do no wrong” is flatly contradicted by our Constitution, which provides for impeachment of the President for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”