And so it begins.....

[jaysunb]

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And so it begins!! "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 he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the galleys, heard in the very hall of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor--He speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and wears their face and their garment, and 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 a city--he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared."
Cicero, 42 B.C., Roman Statesman, orator, and author. 45 administration! and this next generation has to be reminded how easily freedom can be taken away!! We the people have to stop this!! Wake up America!

[Warpy]

1. A lot of Cicero's speeches are well worth reading

Cato, however, was a colossal windbag who made his reputation on destroying a civilization to whom Rome owed much, if not nearly everything. No wonder Republicans love him.

[murielm99]

5. O tempora O mores!

I took four years of Latin in high school. We read and translated some of the Cicero orations in fourth year.

See Cicero's orations against Cataline, a traitor. Very apt.

[TexasProgresive]

6. Off topic from another who studied Latin for 4 years.

I scored perfect on the SAT vocabulary section of the test. At the time I chalked it up to my reading habits. As a middle aged adult I was in a class that centered around 2 words that I could not wrap my brain around. I knew the definitions but they were not my "friends" like most words. Then a light went on, they were Greek origin. Suddenly the real reason for the perfect SAT score was plain - it was those 4 years studying a "dead" language. I was unconsciously breaking them down to their roots and back to understanding. That's my argument for studying Latin and I wish we had gotten to Greek in 4th year as promised. I don't remember why we never got to it. There was a kerfuffle in my senior year that double decimated my French class to the point where our teacher just gave up. That may've affected my other classes.

We studied Cicero in 3rd year- 4th was given to Virgil's Aeneid. Anyway I never though my Latin studies were a waste of time even though I was never really fluent.

[jaysunb]

7. +1 n/t

[Cha]

2. Mahalo for this timely remider from Circero,

Jay

[C Moon]

3. And I believe the GOP has been on the edge of treason for decades.

They probably even crossed the line a few times but were not caught.

[Mountain Mule]

4. Thank you for that!

I need to go back and re-visit some of those old Greek and Roman classics myself. They are the foundation of our Democracy.