How Still We See Thee Lie

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.
--Marcus Tullius Cicero

Robert Earl Keen: Merry Christmas from the Family