
“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 January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC
Those words, first spoken more that twenty one centuries ago have been quoted often during the ensuing millennia, and are repeated frequently by nationalists in our own time. We need not question their longevity, for they remain as relevant and as apt today as they did when Cicero spoke them in the first century BC. In fact they are words never more pertinent than today, for our modern society has so blurred the line between honour and betrayal, between truth and between lies that traitors can move more freely, can spread their poison more widely and can have a more devastating effect than at almost any previous time in our history.
Read more...