Conscience, and the genuine sense of humility that can only be taught by suffering, are really what makes the man (or woman), you know. Because it's actually when any one of us gets too big for our very own britches that we tend to lose sight of the bigger picture, and our true place in the grand scheme of things.
Because it is often at the very height of vanity that we tend to be surrounded by the usual coven of obligatorily attentive sycophants and yes-men, who may very well grin and bear our arbitrary outbursts of self-righteous rage, but lest we forget that it is then that the king may truly be bereft of clothes.
It is then that he becomes little more than a pauper, impoverished of even the benefit of simple truths that those of more humble stature tend to take for granted. In fact, our very first president was offered a crown on many an occasion. And yet, every single time, he refused it.
So perhaps it was actually the numerous setbacks and outright failures that George Washington suffered throughout his life, and specifically when he was often forced to retreat after being outgunned or outmaneuvered time and again by often better trained British forces, that eventually made him so very fit to become the true father and very first president of our great nation.
"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."
