Nothing ever changes

[subdjoe]

What have we learned in two millennia?


"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be
refilled, Public Debt should be reduced, the arrogance of
officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the
assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome
become bankrupt. People must again learn to work instead of
living on public assistance."
Cicero – 55 B.C.



Evidently… nothing!

[moondog]

The fall of Rome was caused by Liberalism, how funny is that?

[The New Guy]

another of my favorite cicero quotes:

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.