What Our Leaders Should Know

"If one pokes into what books were read by the leaders of the Revolution, the Framers of the Constitution, and the principal men of America before 1800, one finds that nearly all of them were acquainted with a few important books: the King James version of the Bible, Plutarch's Lives, Shakespeare, something of Cicero, something of Vergil. 

"This was a body of literature  highly normative. 

"The founders of the Republic thought of their new commonwealth as a blending of the Roman Republic with prescriptive English institutions; and they took for their models in leadership the prophets and kings and apostles of the Bible, and the noble Greeks and Romans of Plutarch. 

"Cato's stubborn virtue, Demosthenes' eloquen[ce]...Cleomenes' rash reforming impulse--these were in their minds' eyes; and they tempered their conduct accordingly. 'But nowadays,' as Chateaubriand wrote more than a century ago, 'statesmen understand only the stock market--and that badly.'"

~Russell Kirk

Of course, in America the regular people are the real leaders, so all of us should read such books, think such thoughts, and take such action. 

We are our leaders, so obviously...we should know what our leaders should know.