“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.” Cicero
Re: quote from Cicero
My favorite novel ever was Taylor Caldwell’s “Pillar of Iron”. It was the story of Cicero trying to save the Roman Republic. One section made me cry as I realized that President Reagan seemed to be fighting a lost cause.
A sad and regrettable but enduring truth. Traitors are a pox that must be destroyed by any means that is necessary and final.
I believe the same of all habitual criminals.