If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. ā Cardinal Richelieu Absolutism, centralized control, and crushing any sign of disagreement were the hallmark traits of the French CarĀdinal Richelieu in the early 1600s. In many ways, Richelieu was considered the father of the modern nation-state, the organizer of the centralized government under the French Monarch, and the originator of the secret police. While not so sweeping in their goals as the French Cardinal, the Custer County School Board has taken a chapter from his methods and has been working for months to bring the disĀtributed power of the public-elected Board and centralize it under a single crushing…