A Murderer Is Less To Fear

                                                                           Cicero


As we move toward a new year, the eternal and prophetic words of Cicero written down over two thousand years ago might best be remembered again and again as they are repeated just as much in their action down through the ages and in the present:

"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious but not treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable for he is known and carries his banner openly.

But the traitor moves against those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through the alleys and heard in the very halls of government itself.

He appears not as a traitor and speaks in accents familiar to his victims and wears their face and their arguments; he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of men. He rots the soul of a nation. He works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city and infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear."

Cicero (written in 42 BC)

Barry Clifford