Who said this, and where was it said? In what context?

[madfloridian]

SNIP..."People were angry, and they were cynical. They were depressed. They were caught off balance and confused -- by the lies and manipulations of the Bush administration, and also by the fact that so many of the pillars of our society had proved in recent years to be so fragile. The Catholic Church scandals, the Florida recount, the Enron fiasco and other corporate corruption cases of its type: These were crises that went far beyond politics. They'd shaken up people's ability to believe in the essential rightness of our most basic institutions. Even the Monica Lewinsky scandal had broken a lot of people's hearts, because they'd seen not just their president but the presidency itself profoundly weakened.

People were aware of living in a world of anything-goes ethics. They were aware of being vulnerable to unpredictable catastrophic acts of terror. All of this made them doubt their leaders, doubt their future, doubt themselves. Young people -- people too young to remember Watergate or Vietnam -- were particularly hard hit psychologically, once the irrational confabulations that had led us into the war in Iraq were exposed. They'd grown up trusting in the basic good of the American government and the basic moral decency of its interventionist policies abroad. Now all this was crashing down around them, and they were at a loss to reassemble the pieces of their pride and their patriotism.

This general crisis of confidence was something that no one -- not Democrats, and certainly not Republicans -- was finding words to address. Even the media, which sensed it, didn't get it...."END SNIP

[punpirate]

1. It is Howard Dean...

... describing in his book his perceptions of public opinion at the end of his term as governor of Vermont in 2002, around the time he decided to run for President.

[madfloridian]

2. Right, who said this?

SNIP.."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 murder is less to fear....."

[punpirate]

3. Cicero...

... but that's sort an all-purpose quote used by both the right and the left.

I think it was originally Cicero's speech to the Roman Senate on the assassination of Julius Caesar two years previously.

[madfloridian]

4. I know, ambiguous.

I found it in the ICH letter today. Just passing time instead of thinking too deeply.