"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."
Marcus Tullius Cicero
By Jupiter, would that MTC would show up on the FAUX set saying something like, "You are found out, impious conniving fools! The nation has been saved by the efforts of one wise man (ME!) -- be gone!"
ReplyDeleteIf Cicero were around today, I'm guessing he would be Tweeting regularly. Seems to me that if you inserted a fluent-Latin language chip in our heads and plopped us down in Rome circa the troublesome times of Julius, Marcus and Company, we would feel pretty much at home.
The human race is the human race. Not much has changed for the last quarter million years.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that I have long term hopes for American Democracy, but Fox News will have much to do with its ultimate demise.