"And by the way, if you hate to go to school you may grow up to be a mule."  In the compelling if sometimes soap opera-ish British TV series The Crown, Season 1, Episode 7, the young Queen Elizabeth, who has been taking private lessons at Eton. becomes aware of the complex issues facing Britain.  Almost admitting she didn't know what she didn't know, she complained to her mother, "I know almost nothing" and admits to a new tutor, "I can't keep up." Elizabeth was more forthright regarding the extent of her abilities and truth about them than Niccolò Machiavelli suggested is desirable in a ruler.  It is unnecessary, he wrote in The Prince, xviii, "for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them."  More simply, in modern-day language, to fool the people is the ruler's only thought. Truth, deceit, and...(Read Full Article)